The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 1 (of 2)Geikie, Archibald
History
The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 1 (of 2)
Geikie, Archibald
Volcanoes -- Great Britain
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--Section showing the position of Sills in the
mica-schist series between Loch Tay and Amulree.
_a_, Mica-schist; _b_, _b_, Sills.]
Intercalated in the vast pile of altered sediments lie numerous sheets
of epidiorite and hornblende-schist, which were erupted as molten
materials, not improbably as varieties of diabase-lava. Most of these
sheets are doubtless intrusive "sills," for they can be observed to
break across from one horizon to another. But some of them may possibly
be contemporaneous lava-streams. A sheet may sometimes be followed
for many miles, occupying the same stratigraphical platform. Thus a
band of sills may be traced from the coast of Banffshire to near Ben
Ledi, a distance of more than 100 miles. Among the hornblendic sills
of this band some occur on a number of horizons between the group of
Ben Voirlich grits and the Ben-y-Glo quartzite. One of the most marked
of these is a sheet, sometimes 200 feet thick, which underlies the
Loch Tay Limestone. Another interesting group in the same great band
has been mapped by the Geological Survey on the hills between Loch Tay
and Amulree, some of them being traceable for several miles among the
mica-schists with which they alternate (Fig. 37).
In Argyllshire also, between Loch Tarbert and Loch Awe, and along the
eastern coasts of the islands of Islay and Jura, an abundant series of
sheets of epidiorite, amphibolite and hornblende-schist runs with the
prevalent strike of the schists, grits and limestones of that region.
Similar rocks reappear in a like position in Donegal, where, as in
Scotland, the frequency of the occurrence of these eruptive rocks on
the horizons of the limestones is worthy of remark. The persistence,
number and aggregate thickness of the sills in this great band mark it
out as the most extensive series of intrusive sheets in the British
Isles.
In addition to the sills there occur also bosses of similar material,
which in their form and their obvious relation to the sheets recall the
structure of volcanic necks. They consist of hornblendic rocks, like
the sills, but are usually tolerably massive, and show much less trace
of superinduced foliation.
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