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
Although the line of separation between the grey dull felsitic sheets
and the more ordinary glassy pitchstone is usually well defined,
the two rocks may be observed to shade into each other in such a
manner as to show that the lithoid material is only a devitrified and
somewhat decomposed condition of the glassy rock. This connection is
particularly to be observed under the precipice at the east end of the
Scuir. At that locality the pitchstone is underlain by a very hard
flinty band, varying in colour from white through various shades of
flesh-colour and brown into black, containing a little free quartz and
crystals of glassy felspar. Where it becomes black it passes into a
rock like that of the main mass of the Scuir. Such vitreous parts of
the bed lie as kernels in the midst of the more lithoid and decomposed
rock. The lower six feet of the "porphyry" are white and still more
decomposed. The relations of this mass are represented in Fig. 282,
where the basalt-rocks of the plateau (_a_) are shown to be cut through
by basalt dykes (_b b_), and overlain by the "porphyry" (_c_) and the
pitchstone (_d_). In the porphyry are shown several pitchstone kernels
(_p_, _p_). It is deserving of remark also that in different parts
of the Scuir, particularly along the north side, the bottom of the
pitchstone beds passes into a dull grey earthy lithoid substance, like
that now under description.
The bedded character of the rock of the Scuir and the well-marked
lithological distinction between its several component sheets show the
lava to have been the product of a number of separate outflows that
found their way one after another into the river-valley, which was the
lowest ground in the vicinity of the active vent. There can be little
doubt, I think, that the lava flowed down the valley. Its successive
streams are still inclined from east to west. The vent of eruption,
therefore, ought to be looked for towards the east. Nowhere within the
Tertiary volcanic region is there any boss of pitchstone or any mass
the shape or size of which is suggestive of this vent. In the island of
Eigg no boss of any kind exists, save those of granophyric porphyry to
be afterwards referred to. But none of these affords any satisfactory
links of connection with the rock of the Scuir. More probably the
vent lay somewhere to the east on ground now overflowed by the sea.
The pitchstone veins of Eigg may represent some of the subterranean
extrusions from the same volcanic pipe, and if so, its site could not
be far off.
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