Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
Near Porto Praya, in the Cape de Verde Islands, some basaltic rocks, lashed by no inconsiderable surf, were completely enveloped with a layer of Nulliporae. The entire surface over many square inches, was coloured of a peach-blossomed red; the layer, however, was of no greater thickness than paper. Another kind, in the form of projecting knobs, grew in the same situation.
But even more remarkable than the above are the vast basaltic sheets which stretch away for a distance of 30 miles by Privas almost to the banks of the Rhône, opposite Montlimart.
In some parts, where the basaltic ring has been breached, and the black ramparts stand detached, the feldspathic lavas have passed between them, and now overhang the sea-coast in lofty cliffs.
In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, about Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high birds are the movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there are no woods to make a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse of flocks of pearl-white sea birds, or of the solitary creature driving on the wind. Theirs is always a surprise of flight.
It was in fact the summit of a submarine mountain, a plateau composed of basaltic rocks and volcanic DEBRIS. During the geological epochs of the earth, this mountain had gradually emerged from the depths of the Pacific, through the action of the subterranean fires, but for ages back the volcano had been a peaceful mountain, and the filled-up crater, an island rising out of the liquid plain.
The square, angular outline, and black colour of the Barn, at once show that it belongs to the basaltic series; whilst the smooth, conical figure, and the varied bright tints of Flagstaff Hill, render it equally clear, that it is composed of the softened, feldspathic rocks.
After a long time he came to the entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from which the heads had issued. In this he found a group of green lights burning upon a kind of basaltic altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging down into the centre of the place. Round the wall ran a lettering of fire in a character unknown to him.
When first I conceived my theory, naturalists were far from suspecting that basaltic rocks were of volcanic origin; I could not then have employed an argument from these rocks as I may do now, for proving that the fires, which we see almost daily issuing with such force from volcanos, are a continuation of that active cause which has so evidently been exerted in all times, and in all places, so far as have been examined of this earth.
Every geologist is aware how often silicified trees occur in volcanic tuffs, the perfect preservation of their internal structure showing that they have not decayed before the petrifying material was supplied. The porous and vesicular nature of a large part, both of the basaltic and trachytic lavas, affords cavities in which silex and carbonate of lime are readily deposited.
One floe of bay-ice had black earth upon it, apparently basaltic in origin, and there was a large berg with a broad band of yellowish brown right through it. The stain may have been volcanic dust. Many of the bergs had quaint shapes. There was one that exactly resembled a large two-funnel liner, complete in silhouette except for smoke.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking