The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
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
It was therefore with no little interest that I detected a series of
vents at four separate localities, viz. Castleton, Grange Mill, Hopton,
and Kniveton Wood. I have no doubt that a more extended search will
bring others to light. Those observed by me are all filled with coarse
agglomerate, the blocks in which are mostly composed of different
lavas, sometimes with the addition of blocks of limestone, while the
matrix consists mainly of lapilli of basic devitrified glass.
The most typical examples form a group of two, possibly three, vents
which rise into two isolated, smooth, grassy dome-shaped hills at
Grange Mill, five miles west from Matlock Bath.[33] In external form
and colour, these eminences present a contrast to the scarped slopes
of limestone around them. They at once recall the contours of many of
the volcanic necks in Central Scotland. On examination it is found that
the material composing them is a dull green agglomerate, the matrix
of which is a compact substance weathering spheroidally, and full of
small lapilli of minutely vesicular diabase. The larger stones consist,
for the most part, of various vesicular dolerites or diabases, together
with some pieces of limestone and occasionally large blocks of the
latter rock, altered into a saccharoid condition. Two dykes of dolerite
or basalt traverse the margin of the larger vent.
[Footnote 33: This is Mr. Bemrose's outcrop, No. 46, _op. cit._ p. 633.]
The steep sides of these agglomerate domes rise from the low ground
around them to a height of 100 to 180 feet, their summits being a
little more than 900 feet above the sea. The smaller neck is nearly
circular, and measures about 1000 feet in diameter. The larger mass
is less regular in shape, and is prolonged into such a bulge on the
south-east as to suggest that its prolongation in that direction may
really mark the position of a third and much smaller vent contiguous to
it. The longer diameter of the larger mass is 2300 and the shorter 1300
feet.
[Illustration: Fig. 178.--View of two volcanic necks in the
Carboniferous Limestone series, at Grange Mill, five miles west of
Matlock Bath, from the north.]
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