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
Great variety is to be found in the thickness of different sheets of
lava in the plateaux. Some of them are not more than 6 or 8 feet;
others reach to 80 or 100 feet, and sometimes, though rarely, to even
greater dimensions. In Antrim, the average thickness of the flows is
probably from 15 to 20 feet.[227] In the fine coast-sections at the
Giant's Causeway, however, some bands may be seen far in excess of that
measurement. The bed that forms the Causeway, for instance, is about
60 or 70 feet thick, and seems to become even thicker further east.
Along the great escarpment, 700 feet high, which rises from the shores
of Gribon, on the west coast of Mull, there are twenty separate beds,
which give an average of 35 feet for the thickness of each flow. On
the great range of sea-precipices along the west coast of Skye, which
present the most stupendous section of the basalts anywhere to be
seen within the limits of the British Islands, the average thickness
of the beds can be conveniently measured. At the Talisker cliffs some
of the flows are not more than 6 or 8 feet; others are 30 or 40 feet.
The chief precipice, 957 feet high (Fig. 286), contains at least 18 or
20 separate lava-sheets, which thus average of from 47 to 53 feet in
thickness. In the cliffs that form the seaward margin of the tableland
of Macleod's Tables (Fig. 283) fourteen successive beds of basalt can
be counted in a vertical section of 400 feet, which is equal to an
average thickness of about 28 feet. But some of the basalts are only
about 6 feet thick, while others are 50 or 60. The Hoe of Duirinish,
759 feet high, is composed of about sixteen distinct beds, which
thus have a mean thickness of 46 feet. The average thickness of the
successive flows on Dunvegan Head, which is 1000 feet high and contains
at least twenty-five separate sheets, is about 40 feet. Still further
north, the cliffs, 800 feet high, comprise sixteen successive flows,
which have thus an average of 50 feet each. Among the Faroe Islands the
average thickness of the basalt-sheets seems to be nearly the same as
in Britain. Thus in the magnificent ranges of precipices of Kalsö, Kunö
and Borö, forty or more sheets may be counted in the vast walls of rock
some 2000 feet high, giving a mean of about 50 feet.
[Footnote 227: See Explanation of Sheet 20, Geol. Survey, Ireland, p. 11.]
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