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The same persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the dews, and the sunlight.
Notwithstanding its valuable properties, our travellers hated the sight of it; and more than once the Irishman, as he placed his axe upon the silicious culms, was heard to speak disrespectfully about it, "weeshin' that there wasn't a stalk of the cane in all Burnayo." But another kind of obstruction vexed Murtagh even more than the brakes of bamboo.
Imbedded in the chalky mud of the deep sea, in many localities, are innumerable cup- shaped sponges, provided with six-rayed silicious spicula, so disposed that the wall of the cup is formed of a lacework of flinty thread. Not less abundant, in some parts of the chalk formation, are the fossils known as Ventriculites, well described by Dr.
Bluish-gray limestone, containing corals; mottled limestone, charged with slates, flint, and chalcedony; red, brown, and blue limestone, mixed with red, green, and yellow shales; sandstone of all tints, white, brown, ochry, dark red, speckled and foliated; coarse silicious sandstone, and red quartzose sandstone beautifully veined with purple; layers of conglomerate, of many colored shales, argillaceous iron, and black oxide manganese; massive black and white granite, traversed by streaks of quartz and of red sienite; coarse red felspathic granite, mixed with large plates of silver mica; such is the masonry and such the frescoing.
'That varies much. This gray sulphuret contains about 70 per cent. of copper, and is worth L.35 per ton. This yellow sulphuret, from being mixed with a large quantity of iron and silicious earth, contains only about 12 or 14 per cent. Some malachites contain so much as 50 per cent., and others less pure, 30 to 40 per cent. of copper.
Thus in Massachusetts, although the first settlers seized upon these grounds, and planted their villages upon them because the forests there were scanty and the ground free from encumbering boulders, were soon driven to betake themselves to those areas where the drift was less silicious, and where the pebbles afforded a share of clay.
We followed the sea-shore, which is composed of silicious sand, and covered with a carpet of creeping shore plants in full bloom. On the edge of the wood, to the left, were many flowering shrubs and pandanus with large scarlet-red flowers.
At first algae and low forms of vegetable life appeared; and doubtless we have lost myriads upon myriads of such lower forms of plant-life in the early strata, because such forms were ill calculated for fossil-preservation, owing to the absence of woody fibre, silicious casing, or hard fruit or seed vessels.
The most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders.
The bearing of the conclusions which are now either established, or highly probable, respecting the origin of silicious, calcareous, and clayey rocks, and their metamorphic derivatives, upon the archaeology of the earth, the elucidation of which is the ultimate object of the geologist, is of no small importance.
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