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.
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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