The _Henry Mountains_, a small group of detached peaks in southern
Utah, rise from a plateau of horizontal rocks. Some of the peaks are
carved wholly in separate domelike uplifts of the strata of the
plateau. In others, as Mount Hillers, the largest of the group, there
is exposed on the summit a core of igneous rock from which the
sedimentary rocks of the flanks dip steeply outward in all directions.
In still others erosion has stripped off the covering strata and has
laid bare the core to its base; and its shape is here seen to be that
of a plano-convex lens or a baker's bun, its flat base resting on the
undisturbed bedded rocks beneath. The structure of Mount Hillers is
shown in Figure 248. The nucleus of igneous rock is four miles in
diameter and more than a mile in depth.
[Illustration: Fig. 248. Section of Mount Hillers]
=Regional intrusions.= These vast bodies of igneous rock, which may
reach hundreds of miles in diameter, differ little from bosses except
in their immense bulk. Like bosses, regional intrusions give off dikes
and sheets and greatly change the rocks about them by their heat. They
are now exposed to view only because of the profound denudation which
has removed the upheaved dome of rocks beneath which they slowly
cooled. Such intrusions are accompanied--whether as cause or as
effect is still hardly known--by deformations, and their masses of
igneous rock are thus found as the core of many great mountain ranges.
The granitic masses of which the Bitter Root Mountains and the Sierra
Nevadas have been largely carved are each more than three hundred
miles in length. Immense regional intrusions, the cores of once lofty
mountain ranges, are found upon the Laurentian peneplain.
=Physiographic effects of intrusive masses.= We have already seen
examples of the topographic effects of intrusive masses in Mount
Hillers, the Spanish Peaks, and in the great mountain ranges mentioned
in the paragraph on regional intrusions, although in the latter
instances these effects are entangled with the effects of other
processes. Masses of igneous rock cannot be intruded within the crust
without an accompanying deformation on a scale corresponding to the
bulk of the intruded mass. The overlying strata are arched into hills
or mountains, or, if the molten material is of great extent, the
strata may conceivably be floated upward to the height of a plateau.
We may suppose that the transference of molten matter from one region
to another may be among the causes of slow subsidences and elevations.
Intrusions give rise to fissures, dikes, and intrusive sheets, and
these dislocations cannot fail to produce earthquakes. Where intrusive
masses open communication with the surface, volcanoes are established
or fissure eruptions occur such as those of Iceland.
The Intrusive Rocks
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