Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Geology -- South America; Volcanoes
The shores of Storm Bay are skirted, to the height of a few hundred
feet, by strata of sandstone, containing pebbles of the formation just
described, with its characteristic fossils, and therefore belonging to
a subsequent age. These strata of sandstone often pass into shale, and
alternate with layers of impure coal; they have in many places been
violently disturbed. Near Hobart Town, I observed one dike, nearly a
hundred yards in width, on one side of which the strata were tilted at
an angle of 60 degrees, and on the other they were in some parts
vertical, and had been altered by the effects of the heat. On the west
side of Storm Bay, I found these strata capped by streams of basaltic
lava with olivine; and close by there was a mass of brecciated scoriae,
containing pebbles of lava, which probably marks the place of an
ancient submarine crater. Two of these streams of basalt were separated
from each other by a layer of argillaceous wacke, which could be traced
passing into partially altered scoriae. The wacke contained numerous
rounded grains of a soft, grass-green mineral, with a waxy lustre, and
translucent on its edges: under the blowpipe it instantly blackened,
and the points fused into a strongly magnetic, black enamel. In these
characters, it resembles those masses of decomposed olivine, described
at St. Jago in the Cape de Verde group; and I should have thought that
it had thus originated, had I not found a similar substance, in
cylindrical threads, within the cells of the vesicular basalt,—a state
under which olivine never appears; this substance, I believe, would be
classed as bole by mineralogists. (Chlorophaeite, described by Dr.
MacCulloch (“Western Islands” volume 1 page 504) as occurring in a
basaltic amygdaloid, differs from this substance, in remaining
unchanged before the blowpipe, and in blackening from exposure to the
air. May we suppose that olivine, in undergoing the remarkable change
described at St. Jago, passes through several states?)
TRAVERTIN WITH EXTINCT PLANTS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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