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
The volcanic agglomerates and breccias, in the south-west of Ayrshire,
attain a great development in several centres probably at or near the
original volcanic vents. They present several distinct petrographical
types. The remarkable neck-like hill of Knockdolian in the Stinchar
Valley is made of a coarse breccia composed mainly of angular pieces of
dull greyish-green fine-grained diabase. The breccias and agglomerates
of Bennane Head in some parts consist largely of broken-up shales,
flinty mudstone, black radiolarian flint or chert, and abundant
fragments of andesites and felsites. In other parts the volcanic
material predominates, including angular and subangular fragments of
various somewhat basic lavas, lumps of vesicular slag and pieces of
pumice. Here and there much calcite is diffused through the matrix in
strings, veins and patches, which enclose the lapilli. The agglomerate
north of Lendalfoot possesses a greenish, somewhat serpentinous
matrix, through which immense numbers of tabular felspar crystals are
scattered. Similar crystals also occur abundantly in embedded blocks
of one of the purplish diabase-porphyrites, which occurs in mass on
the shore and inland, and closely resembles the rock of Carnethy in the
Old Red Sandstone volcanic series of the Pentland Hills.
Yet another and very distinct type of agglomerate is to be seen on the
Mains Hill south-east of Ballantrae. It is a coarse rock, enclosing
blocks up to a yard or more in diameter, of a fine compact purplish
porphyrite, with large crystals of plagioclase and smaller ones of
augite. In some places immense numbers of the small lapilli in the
matrix consist of an extremely fine vesicular pumice. Small perfect and
larger broken crystals of augite are likewise abundant in some of the
greenish, more basic parts of the mass. These greenish serpentinous
parts and the numerous augite crystals point to the explosion of some
tolerably basic pyroxenic lava. A similar dark green, almost black,
rock, with augite crystals, which sometimes measure a quarter of an
inch in diameter, occurs near Sanquhar in Nithsdale. It presents a
close resemblance to the agglomerate of Rhobell Fawr, already alluded
to. So far as these Scottish agglomerates have yet been microscopically
examined, they have been found to be composed of crystals,
crystal-fragments, and lapilli derived partly from lavas similar to
those above described, and partly from felsitic and other rocks which
have not yet been observed here in the form of lavas.
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