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Sheets of quartzose matter, chiefly lenticular and conforming to the bedding of the inclosing rocks, but sometimes filling irregular fractures across such bedding, found only in metamorphic rocks, limited in extent laterally and vertically, and consisting of material indigenous to the strata in which they occur, separated in the process of metamorphism, e.g., quartz ledges carrying gold, copper, iron pyrites, etc., in the Alleghany Mountains, New England, Canada, etc.
The scarcity of limestone in many extensive regions of metamorphic rocks, as in the Eastern and Southern Grampians of Scotland, may have been the result of some action of this kind; and if the limestones of the Lower Laurentian in Canada afford a remarkable exception to the general rule, we must not forget that it is precisely in this most ancient formation that the Eozoon Canadense has been found.
Nor should we be justified in assuming that if, for instance, the bed of the Pacific Ocean were now converted into a continent, we should there find formations older than the silurian strata, supposing such to have been formerly deposited; for it might well happen that strata which had subsided some miles nearer to the centre of the earth, and which had been pressed on by an enormous weight of superincumbent water, might have undergone far more metamorphic action than strata which have always remained nearer to the surface.
These have been quickly cooled at the surface of the earth, or not far below it. Secondly. Plutonic Rocks, such as granite. These have been slowly cooled deep down in the earth under heavy pressure. There is also a class of rocks, called metamorphic rocks, including some kinds of marble. These are, strictly speaking, crystalline rocks, and yet they are arranged in something like layers.
Sedimentary strata have been carried down, by movements of the earth's crust, far below the surface, covered by other deposits, and subjected to great heat, which, aided by the water contained in the rocks and various chemical reactions, has effected a re-arrangement of the mineral contents of the strata, so that by molecular movements, the metamorphic crystalline rocks, including interstratified granites and greenstones, have been formed.
VIRCHOW, Transformisme et descendance, Berlin, 1893. But all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains impregnable.
From the Jaula to the plain, the stratification has been in most places obliterated, except near the tops of some of the mountains; and the metamorphic action has been extremely great. In this space, the number and bulk of the intrusive masses of differently coloured porphyries, injected one into another and intersected by dikes, is truly extraordinary.
The whole district, from the sea to the Cordillera, is more or less metalliferous; and I heard of gold, silver, copper, lead, mercury, and iron veins. The metamorphic action, even in the lower strata, has certainly been far less here than in Central Chile.
The immense areas in some parts of the world, for instance in South America, of bare metamorphic rocks, which must have been heated under great pressure, have always seemed to me to require some special explanation; and we may perhaps believe that we see in these large areas, the many formations long anterior to the silurian epoch in a completely metamorphosed condition.
Hopkins also expresses his belief that sedimentary beds of considerable horizontal extent have rarely been completely destroyed. But all geologists, excepting the few who believe that our present metamorphic schists and plutonic rocks once formed the primordial nucleus of the globe, will admit that these latter rocks have been stripped of their covering to an enormous extent.
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