The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 2 (of 2)Geikie, Archibald
Science
The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 2 (of 2)
Geikie, Archibald
Volcanoes -- Great Britain
As an illustration of the association of the two kinds of rock in
dykes I may cite an example which appears on the southern edge of the
Market Stance of Broadford (Fig. 254). Here the characteristic triple
arrangement is typically developed. A central light-coloured band,
about eight to ten feet broad, consists of a spherulitic granophyre
in which the spherulites are crowded together and project from the
weathered surface like peas, though they do not here show the curious
rod-like aggregation so marked in some other dykes. On either side of
this acid centre a narrow basalt dyke intervenes as a wall next to the
Torridon sandstone which here forms the country-rock. Such compound
dykes have sometimes a total width of 100 feet or more.
In this instance, and generally throughout the district, there is
nothing to indicate that the different bands of the dyke have any
relation to each other as connected uprises of material from the
same original magma which was either heterogeneous or was undergoing
a process of differentiation beneath the terrestrial crust. On the
contrary, the several parts of each dyke are as distinctly marked off
from each other as they could have been had they been injected at
widely separated intervals of volcanic activity.
Mr. Harker, in the course of his survey of this Skye ground, has
observed that "where evidence is available, the central acid dyke
is found to be newer than the basic ones. It has not split a single
basic dyke, but has insinuated itself between the two members of a
double dyke. This is more clearly seen when the acid magma has been
forced into a triple or multiple basic dyke; the perfect symmetry
of arrangement may in this case be lost. For instance, on the shore
north-east of Corry, Broadford, a 13 feet dyke of granophyre occurs in
a multiple dyke of basalt, but it has taken its line so as to leave
only a one-foot dyke on one side, and a group with a total width of
12 feet on the other. Also it has not accurately kept its course, but
has cut obliquely across one of the group of dykes alluded to. In some
cases it is certain that the acid magma has to some extent dissolved a
portion of the wall of a basic dyke with which it has come in contact.
This may account for the magma finding its easiest path along, and
especially between, pre-existing more basic dykes." This subject will
be again referred to in Chapter xlviii., when the phenomena of compound
sills are discussed.
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