THE ANCIENT VOLCANOES OF GREAT BRITAIN

THE
ANCIENT VOLCANOES
OF
GREAT BRITAIN

BY

SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, F.R.S.

D.C.L. Oxf., D. Sc. Camb., Dubl.; LL.D. St. And., Edinb.
DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND; CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE; OF THE ACADEMIES OF BERLIN, VIENNA, MUNICH, TURIN, BELGIUM, STOCKHOLM, GÖTTINGEN, NEW YORK; OF THE IMPERIAL MINERALOGICAL SOCIETY AND SOCIETY OF NATURALISTS, ST. PETERSBURG; NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, MOSCOW; SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY, CHRISTIANIA; AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES OF LONDON, FRANCE, BELGIUM, STOCKHOLM, ETC.
WITH SEVEN MAPS AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
1897
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

CHAPTER XXIX
THE CARBONIFEROUS VOLCANOES OF ENGLAND

The North of England: Dykes, The Great Whin Sill—The Derbyshire Toadstones—The Isle of Man—East Somerset—Devonshire

1. THE NORTH OF ENGLAND

The volcanic intercalations which diversify the Lower Carboniferous formations of Southern Scotland extend but a short way across the English Border, and although, over the moors and hills of the north of Cumberland and Northumberland, the Carboniferous sandstones, limestones and shales are well exposed, they present no continuation of either the plateau or puy-eruptions which play so prominent a part in the geology of Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire. This deficiency is all the more noticeable seeing that the Carboniferous system is exposed down to its very base, in the deep dales of the North of England. Had any truly interstratified volcanic material existed in the system there, it could hardly fail to have been detected.

But while contemporaneous volcanic rocks are absent, the northern English counties contain many intrusive masses of dolerite, diabase, andesite or other eruptive rocks, which may be found traversing all the subdivisions of the Carboniferous system. These eruptive materials have taken two forms: in some cases they rise as Dykes, in others they appear as Sills.

Dykes.—With regard to the dykes, some are probably much later than the Carboniferous period, and consequently will be more appropriately considered in Chapters xxxiv. and xxxv. The great Cleveland dyke, for example, which runs across the Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic and Jurassic formations, is probably referable to the Older Tertiary volcanic period. One dyke known as the Hett Dyke, has been plausibly claimed as possibly of Carboniferous age. It runs in a W.S.W. direction from the Magnesian Limestone escarpment at Quarrington Hill, a few miles to the east of Durham, through the great Coal-field, across the Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone, disappearing near Middleton in Teesdale. Its total length is thus about 23 miles. It varies in breadth from about 6 to about 15 feet, and appears to increase in dimensions as it goes westward.[1]

[1] Sedgwick, Trans. Geol. Soc. 2nd series, iii. part 1 (1826-28), p. 63; Trans. Cambridge Phil. Soc. ii. (1822), p. 21. Sir J. Lowthian Bell, Proc. Roy. Soc. xxiii. (1875), p. 543.

The age of this dyke cannot at present be satisfactorily fixed. It must be later than the Coal-measures through which it rises. Sedgwick long ago pointed out that though it reaches the escarpment of the Magnesian Limestone, it does not cut it; yet it is found in coal-mining to traverse the Coal-measures underlying the Limestone. He was accordingly inclined to believe it to be of older date than the Magnesian Limestone. At its western extremity it approaches close to the Great Whin Sill of Teesdale, though no absolute connection between the two has been established. Mr. Teall, however, has called attention to the similarity between the microscopic structure of the rock forming the Hett Dyke and that of the mass of the Whin Sill, and he is strongly inclined to regard them as belonging to the same period of intrusion.[2]

[2] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xl. (1884), p. 230.

It is especially worthy of remark that in the course of its nearly rectilinear course across the Durham Coal-field, the Hett Dyke, where it crosses the Wear, is flanked on the north at a distance of a little more than two miles by a second parallel dyke of nearly identical composition. Between the two dykes, during mining operations, a sill about 20 feet thick has been met with, lying between two well-known coal-seams at a depth of about 60 fathoms from the surface, and extending over an area of at least 15 acres.[3] Microscopic examination of this sill by Mr. Teall proved that the rock presents the closest resemblance to that of the Hett Dyke.[4] In this case, it may be regarded as probable that the two dykes and the intermediate sill form one related series of intrusions, and the conjecture that the Hett Dyke may be connected with the Whin Sill thus receives corroboration. The age of the Whin Sill itself will be discussed a few pages further on.

[3] Sir Lowthian Bell, Proc. Roy. Soc. xxiii. (1875), p. 544.

[4] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xl. (1884), p. 230.

Of the other dykes which may possibly be coeval with the Hett Dyke we may specially note those which follow the same W.S.W. trend, for that strike differs from the general W.N.W. direction of most of the dykes. Two conspicuous examples of the south-westerly trend may be seen, one near Morpeth, the other north of Bellingham. The former dyke, as regards microscopic structure, is more nearly related to the majority of the series in the North of England. But that north of Bellingham (High Green) presents affinities both in structure and composition with the Hett Dyke,[5] and may perhaps belong to the same period of intrusion.

[5] Mr. Teall, op. cit. p. 244. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxix. (1884), p. 656, and Proc. Geol. Assoc. (1886). See also Prof. Lebour, Geology of Northumberland and Durham, chap. xi.

The Great Whin Sill.—The geologist who, after making himself acquainted with the abundant sills among the Carboniferous rocks in the centre of Scotland, finds his way into Northumberland, meets there with geological features that have become familiar to him further north. The sea-cliffs of Bamborough and Dunstanborough, the rocky islets of Farne, the long lines of brown crag and green slope that strike inland through the Kyloe Hills and wind across the cultivated lowlands and the moorlands beyond, remind him at every turn of the scenery in the basin of the Forth. But not until he has traced these ridges for many miles southwards and found their component rocks to form there an almost continuous sheet does he realize that nothing of the kind among the Scottish Carboniferous rocks can be compared for extent to this display in the North of England.[6]

[6] The Whin Sill has been the subject of much discussion, and a good deal of geological literature has been devoted to its consideration. The writings of Trevelyan, Sedgwick, W. Hutton, Phillips and Tate are especially deserving of recognition. The intrusive character of the Sill, maintained by some of these writers, was finally established by the mapping of the Geological Survey, and was discussed and illustrated by Messrs. W. Topley and G. A. Lebour in a paper in the 33rd volume of the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1877), in which references to the earlier observers will be found. See also Prof. Lebour's Outlines of the Geology of Northumberland, 2nd edit. (1886), p. 92. The petrography of the Whin Sill is fully treated by Mr. Teall in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xl. (1884), p. 640, where a bibliography of the subject is also given.

From the furthest skerries of the Farne Islands southwards to Burton Fell on the great Pennine escarpment, a distance in a straight line of about 80 miles, this intrusive sheet may be traced in the Carboniferous Limestone series (Map I.). There are intervals where its continuity cannot be actually followed at the surface, but that it really runs unbroken from one end to the other underground cannot be doubted by any one who has examined the region. This singular feature in the geology and scenery of the North of England is known locally as the Great Whin Sill.[7] From the rocky islets and castle-crowned crags of the coast-line it maintains its characteristic topography, structure and composition throughout its long course in the interior. So regularly parallel with the sedimentary strata does it appear to lie, that it was formerly regarded by many observers as a true lava-sheet, poured out upon the sea-floor over which the limestones and shales were laid down. But its really intrusive character has now been clearly demonstrated. Not a vestige of any tuff has been detected associated with it, nor does it ever present the usual characters of a true lava-stream.[8] Its internal structure and the wonderful uniformity in its character mark it out as a typical intrusive sheet.

[7] "Whin" is a common term in Scotland and the North of England for any hard kind of stone, especially such as can be used for making and mending roads. "Sill" denotes a flat course or bed of stone, and was evidently applied to this intrusive sheet from its persistent flat-bedded position and its prominence among the other gently inclined strata among which it lies. It is from this example in the North of England that the word "sill" has passed into geological literature.

[8] On the coast at Bamborough and the Harkess Rocks the usual petrographical characters of the Whin Sill are exchanged for those of fine-grained amygdaloidal diabases arranged in distinct sheets, which in their upper parts are highly vesicular and show ropy surfaces—peculiarities suggestive of true lava-streams. But according to Professor Lebour the rocks are intrusive into limestone and shale (Geology of Northumberland and Durham, p. 98). Mr. Teall has expressed the suspicion that these rocks must have consolidated under conditions somewhat different from those which characterized the normal Whin Sill (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xl. p. 643). They seem to be the only parts of the sill which present features that might possibly indicate superficial outflow.

Among the manifestations of the subterranean intrusion of igneous rocks in the British Isles the Great Whin Sill, next after the Dalradian sills of Scotland, is the most extensive. Its striking continuity for so great a distance, and the absence around it of any other trace of igneous action, save a few dykes, place it in marked contrast to the ordinary type of Carboniferous sills. The occasional gaps on its line of outcrop in the northern part of its course do not really affect our impression of the persistence of the sheet. They not improbably indicate merely that in its protrusion it had a wavy irregular limit, which in the progress of denudation has occasionally been not yet reached. For mile after mile the sill has been mapped by the Geological Survey in lines of crag across the moorlands, and as a conspicuous band among the limestones and shales that form the steep front of the Pennine escarpment, where it has long been known in the fine sections exposed among the gullies by which that noble rock-face has been furrowed.

Fig. 176.—Section from the great Limestone escarpment on the west to the Millstone Grit hills east of Teesdale.
1. Silurian strata; 2. Carboniferous Limestone series; 3. The Great Whin Sill, which gradually rises to higher stratigraphical position as it goes westward; 4. Millstone Grit.

Along its main outcrop, the sill dips gently eastwards below the portion of the Carboniferous Limestone series which overlies it. But so slight are the inclinations, so gentle the undulations of the rocks in this part of the country, that far to the east of that outcrop the sill has been laid bare by the streams which in the larger dales have cut their way through the overlying cake of Carboniferous strata down to the Silurian platform on which they rest ([Fig. 176]). Among these inland revelations of the eastward continuation of the sill under Carboniferous Limestone strata, the most striking and best known are those which have been made by the River Tees, and of which the famous waterfalls of the High Force and Cauldron Snout are the most picturesque features. The distance of the remotest of these denuded outcrops or "inliers" from the main escarpment is not less than 20 miles.

It is not possible to form an accurate estimate of the total underground area of the Whin Sill. In the southern half of the district, south of the line of the Roman Wall, where, the inclination of the strata being generally low, the same stratigraphical horizons are exposed by denudation far to the east of the main outcrops of the rocks, we know that the sill must have a subterranean extent of more than 400 square miles. Yet this is probably only a small part of the total area over which the molten material was injected. In the northern part of the district, the Carboniferous Limestone series is not exposed over so broad a stretch of country, and denudation has not there revealed the eastward extension of the sill. But there is no reason to suppose the sheet to be less continuous and massive there. We must remember also that the present escarpment has been produced by denudation, and that the intrusive sheet must have once extended westwards beyond its present limits at the surface. If, therefore, we were to state broadly that the Great Whin Sill has been intruded into the Carboniferous Limestone series over an area of 1000 square miles we should probably be still below the truth.

The rock composing this vast intrusive sheet is a dolerite or diabase, which maintains throughout its wide extent a remarkable uniformity of petrographical characters. In this and other respects it illustrates the typical features of sills. Thus it is coarsest in texture where it is thickest, and somewhat finer in grain towards its upper and lower surfaces than in the centre. Among the coarser varieties the component crystals of augite are not infrequently an inch in length and occur in irregular patches.[9] Occasional amygdaloidal portions are observable, but these are not more marked than those to be found in the "whin-dykes" of the same region.[10] The amygdaloidal and vesicular fine-grained rocks of the Bamborough district may possibly be quite distinct from the main body of the Whin Sill.

[9] Sedgwick, Cambridge Phil. Trans. ii. p. 166. Mr. Teall, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xl. p. 643.

[10] Messrs. Topley and Lebour, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxiii. p. 418.

Under the microscope the rock is seen to consist essentially of the usual minerals—plagioclase, augite and titaniferous magnetic iron-ore. An ophitic intergrowth of the augite and felspar is observable, likewise a certain quantity of micropegmatite which plays the part of groundmass between the interstices of the lath-shaped felspars. Full details of the characteristics of the component minerals and their arrangement are given by Mr. Teall in the paper already cited.

The main body of the sill is a sheet which sometimes diminishes to less than 20 feet in thickness and sometimes expands to 150 feet, but averages from 80 to 100 feet. It occasionally divides, as near Great Bavington, where it appears at the surface in two distinct beds separated by an intervening group of limestones and shales. Occasionally, as at Elf's Hill Quarry, it gives out branches which send strings into the adjacent limestone.[11]

[11] Messrs. Topley and Lebour, op. cit. [p. 413].

Although in most natural sections it seems to lie quite parallel with the strata above and below, yet a number of examples of its actual intrusion have been observed. When traced across the country, it is found not to remain on a definite horizon, but to pass transgressively across considerable thicknesses of strata. Its variations in this respect are well shown in the accompanying table of comparative sections constructed by Messrs. Topley and Lebour.[12] It will be seen that while at Harlow Hill the sill is found overlying the Great Limestone of Alston Moor, at Rugley, five miles off it lies about 1000 feet lower down, far below the position of the Tyne-bottom Limestone. Still farther north, however, the sill west of Holy Island is said to lie 800 feet above the Great Limestone and to come among the higher beds of the Carboniferous Limestone series.[13]

[12] Op. cit. plate xviii.

[13] Op. cit. [p. 414].

The Whin Sill appears generally to thicken in an easterly or north-easterly direction. There are further indications that it was intruded from east to west. Thus, at Shepherd's Gap, on the Great Roman Wall, the dolerite, coming evidently from an easterly quarter, has broken up and thrust itself beneath a bed of limestone. Again, when the sill bifurcates the branches unite towards the east or north-east.[14] The sill can be proved to thin away to the west from Teesdale to the Pennine escarpment, and in Weardale the "Little Whin Sill" diminishes from 20 feet, till in three miles it disappears.[15]

[14] Op. cit. [p. 415].

[15] Op. cit. [p. 419].

Walker & Bontall sc.

The strata in contact with the Whin Sill, both above and below, have been more or less altered. Sandstones have been least affected; shales have suffered most, passing into a kind of porcellanite, with development of garnet and other minerals.[16] Limestone often shows only slight traces of change, though here and there it has become crystalline.

[16] Mr. Teall, op. cit. xxxix. (1884), p. 642, and authors cited by him.

No trace of any boss or neck has been detected in the whole region which might be supposed to mark a funnel of ascent for the material of the Whin Sill. The Hett Dyke and the High Green Dyke, already noticed, may, however, have been possibly connected with the injection of this great intrusive sheet. No other visible mass of igneous rock in the region has been even plausibly conjectured to indicate a point or line of emission for the sill.

It is certainly singular that in so wide a territory, where the whole succession of strata has been so admirably laid bare by denudation in thousands of natural sections, and where, moreover, much additional information has been obtained from lead-mining as to the nature of the rocks below ground, not a single vestige of tuff, agglomerate or interstratified lava has been up to the present time recorded, unless the Harkess rocks already alluded to can be so regarded.

Judging, however, from the analogy of the other districts of igneous rocks in Britain, we can hardly resist the conclusion that the Great Whin Sill is essentially a manifestation of volcanic action, that it was connected with the uprise of basic lava in volcanic orifices, and that the subterranean energy may quite probably have succeeded in reaching the surface and ejecting there both lavas and tuffs.

It appears to be certain that any vents which existed cannot have lain to the west of the present escarpment of the sill, for no trace of them can be found there piercing the Carboniferous or older formations. They must have lain somewhere to the east in the area now overspread with Millstone Grit and Coal-measures, or still farther east in the tract now concealed under the North Sea. The evidence of the sill itself, as we have seen, corroborates this view of the probable situation of the centre of disturbance.

The question of the geological age of the sill is one of considerable difficulty, to which no confident answer can be given.[17] The injection of the diabase must obviously be considerably later than the highest strata through which it has risen; that is, it must be younger than some of the higher members of the Carboniferous Limestone series. But here our positive evidence fails.

[17] See Messrs. Topley and Lebour, op. cit. [p. 418].

The Sill is traversed by the same faults which disrupt the surrounding Carboniferous rocks. It is therefore of older date than these dislocations. Its striking general parallelism with the shales and limestones probably proves that it was intruded before the rocks were much disturbed from their original horizontal position. But the manner in which the intrusive rock has been thrust into and has involved the shales and limestones seems to indicate that these strata had already become consolidated and lay under the pressure of a great thickness of superincumbent Carboniferous strata.

In the absence of all certainty on the subject it seems most natural to place the Whin Sill provisionally among the Carboniferous volcanic series with which petrographically and structurally it has so much in common. In Scotland the puy-eruptions continued till the time of the Coal-measures. If, before the close of the Carboniferous period, volcanic vents were opened somewhere to the east of the coal-fields of Northumberland and Durham, they might be accompanied with basic sills injected into the Carboniferous Limestone series, which was then lying still approximately horizontal under a thickness of from 3500 to 5000 feet of Carboniferous sedimentary deposits. These still undiscovered volcanoes seem to have been endowed with even more energy than those of Central and Southern Scotland, at least nowhere else among the Carboniferous records of Britain is there such a colossal manifestation of subterranean intrusion as the Great Whin Sill.

2. THE DERBYSHIRE TOADSTONES

In the absence of any certain evidence that the Whin Sill belongs to the Carboniferous period, we must advance southward into the very heart of England before any clear vestiges can be found of contemporaneous volcanic eruptions among the members of the Carboniferous system. After quitting the lavas and tuffs of Roxburghshire and their brief continuations across the English border, we do not again meet with any truly bedded volcanic rocks in that system until we reach the middle of Derbyshire. In this picturesque district, famous for its lead-mines and its mineral waters, a feebly developed but interesting group of intercalated lavas, locally called "toadstones," has long been known. There is thus a space of some 150 miles across which, though the formations are there so fully developed and so abundantly trenched by valleys from the top to the bottom of the system, no volcanic vents nor any trace of Carboniferous volcanic ejections has yet been found. On the other hand, after the district of the "toadstones" is passed, the Carboniferous rocks are again destitute of any volcanic intercalations across the centre and south-west of England and over Wales, until after a space of about 150 miles they reappear in Somerset.

The volcanic group of Derbyshire thus stands out entirely isolated. Lying in the Carboniferous Limestone, where that formation is typically developed, it presents an admirable example of a thoroughly marine phase of volcanic action (Map I.).

One of the most prominent features in the geology of the centre of England is the broad anticlinal fold which brings up the lower portion of the Carboniferous system to form the long ridge of the Pennine chain that runs from Yorkshire to the Midland plain, and separates the eastern from the western coal-fields. This fold widens southwards until not only the Millstone Grit and Yoredale rocks, but the underlying Mountain Limestone is laid bare. A broad limestone district is thus exposed in the very heart of the country, ranging as a green fertile undulating tableland, deeply cut by winding valleys, which expose admirable sections of the strata, but nowhere reach the base of the system. The total visible depth of the limestone series is computed to be about 1500 feet; the Yoredale shales and limestones may be 500 feet more; so that the calcareous formations in which the volcanic phenomena are exhibited reach a thickness of at least 2000 feet.

It is not yet definitely known through what vertical extent of this thickness of sedimentary material the volcanic platforms extend, but where most fully developed they perhaps range through 1000 feet, lying chiefly in the Carboniferous Limestone, but apparently in at least one locality extending up into the lower division of the Yoredale group. The area within which they can be studied corresponds nearly with that in which the limestone forms the surface of the country, or a district measuring about 20 miles from north to south, with an extreme breadth of 10 miles in an east and west direction.

A special historical interest belongs to the Derbyshire "toadstones."[18] They furnished Whitehurst with material for his speculations, and were believed by him to be as truly igneous rocks as the lava which flows from Hecla, Vesuvius or Etna. But he thought that they had been introduced among the strata and "did not overflow the surface of the earth, according to the usual operations of volcanoes."[19]

[18] This word has by some writers been supposed to be corrupted from tod-stein, dead-stone, in allusion to the dying out of the lead veins there; by others the name has been thought to be derived from the peculiar green speckled aspect of much of the rock, resembling the back of a toad.

[19] An Enquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth, 1778, Appendix, pp. 149, et seq.

His views were published as far back as 1778, three years after Hutton read the first outline of his theory of the earth and made known his observations regarding the igneous origin of whinstones.[20] The first detailed account of the Derbyshire eruptive rocks was that given by Fairey,[21] which has served as the basis of all subsequent descriptions. Conybeare, in particular, prepared a succinct narrative from Fairey's more diffuse statements, and thus placed clearly before geologists the nature and distribution of these volcanic intercalations.[22] Subsequently the district was mapped by De la Beche and the officers of the Geological Survey, and the areas occupied by the several outcrops of igneous rock could then be readily seen.[23]

[20] Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. i. p. 275, et seq. Hutton specially mentions the toadstone of Derbyshire as one of the rocks produced by fusion, p. 277.

[21] General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire (1811).

[22] Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales (1822), p. 448.

[23] See Sheets 71 N.W., 72 N.E., 81 N.E. and S.E. and 82 S.W. of the Geological Survey of England and Wales.

Though the "toadstones" were believed to form definite platforms among the limestone strata, and thus to be capable of being used as reliable horizons in the mineral fields of Derbyshire, they appear to have been generally regarded as intrusive sheets like the Whin Sill of the north. Thus De la Beche in his Manual of Geology, giving a summary of what was known at the time regarding intercalated igneous rocks, remarks with regard to the Derbyshire toadstones that they may from all analogy be considered to have been injected among the limestones which would be easily separated by the force of the intruded igneous material.[24] But the same observer, after his experience among the ancient volcanic rocks of Devonshire, came fully to recognize the proofs of contemporaneous outflow among the Derbyshire toadstones. In his subsequently published Geological Observer, he described the toadstones as submarine lavas that had been poured out over the floor of the sea in which the Carboniferous Limestone was deposited, and had been afterwards covered up under fresh deposits of limestone.[25] It is remarkable, however, that he specially comments on the absence, as he believed, of any contemporaneously ejected ashes and lapilli, such as occur in Devonshire. That true tuffs or volcanic ashes are associated with the toadstones was noticed by Jukes in 1861,[26] and afterwards by the Geological Survey.[27] Since that time geologists have generally recognized these Derbyshire igneous rocks as truly contemporaneous intercalations. But very little has recently been written on the structure of the district, our information regarding it being still based mainly on the early observations of Fairey and the mapping of the Geological Survey.

[24] Manual, 3rd edit. 1833, p. 462.

[25] Geological Observer (1851), pp. 642-645.

[26] Student's Manual of Geology, 2nd edit. (1863), p. 523. For a general résumé of the proofs of contemporaneity furnished by the toadstones, see "The Geology of North Derbyshire," by Messrs. A. H. Green and A. Strahan (Memoirs of the Geological Survey, 2nd edit. (1887), p. 123).

[27] In the first edition of the Memoir on the Geology of North Derbyshire, published in 1859, the authors of which were Messrs. A. H. Green, C. le Neve Foster and J. R. Dakyns.

The subject, however, has now been resumed by Mr. H. Arnold Bemrose, who in 1894, after a prolonged study of the petrography of the rocks, communicated the results of his researches to the Geological Society.[28] In his excellent paper, to which I shall immediately make fuller reference, he mentions the localities at which lava-form and fragmental rocks may be observed, but does not enter on the discussion of the geological structure of the region or of the history of the volcanic eruptions. Before the announcement of his paper, hearing that I proposed to make for the first time a rapid traverse of the toadstone district, for the purpose of acquainting myself with the rocks on the ground, he kindly offered to conduct me over it. My chief object, besides that of seeing the general nature of the volcanic phenomena of the region, was to examine more particularly the areas of the volcanic fragmental rocks, with the view of discovering whether among them some remains might not be found of the actual vents of discharge. In this search I was entirely successful. Aided by Mr. Bemrose's intimate knowledge of the ground, I was enabled to visit in rapid succession those tracts which seemed most likely to furnish the required evidence, and in a few days was fortunate enough to obtain proofs of six or seven distinct vents, ranging from the extreme northern to the furthest southern boundary of the volcanic district. Mr. Bemrose has undertaken to continue the investigation, and will, I trust, work out the detailed stratigraphy of the Carboniferous Limestone so as eventually to furnish an exhaustive narrative of the whole volcanic history of Derbyshire. Meanwhile no adequate account of the area can be given. But I will here state all the essential facts which up to the present time have been ascertained.

[28] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. l. (1894), p. 603.

1. THE ROCKS ERUPTED.—Mr. Allport has described the microscopic character of some of the toadstones,[29] and further details have been supplied by Mr. Teall.[30] The fullest account of the subject, however, is that given by Mr. Bemrose in the paper above referred to. This observer distinguishes the lava-form from the fragmental rocks, and gives the minute characters of each series. He does not, however, separate true interstratified lavas from injected sills, nor the bedded tuffs from the coarse agglomerates which fill up the vents. These distinctions are obviously required in order that the true nature and sequence of the materials in the volcanic eruptions may be traced, and that the phenomena exhibited in Derbyshire may be brought into comparison with those found in other Carboniferous districts. But to establish them satisfactorily the whole region must be carefully re-examined and even to some extent re-mapped.

[29] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxx. (1874), p. 529.

[30] British Petrography, p. 209.

The lavas (including, in the meantime, sheets which there can be little doubt are sills) show three main types of minute structure and composition, which are discriminated by Mr. Bemrose as—(a) Olivine-dolerites; these, the most abundant of the series, consist of augite in grains, olivine in idiomorphic crystals, plagioclase giving lath-shaped and tabular sections, and magnetite or ilmenite in rods and grains; (b) Ophitic olivine-dolerites, consisting of augite in ophitic plates forming the groundmass, in which are imbedded idiomorphic olivine, plagioclase (often giving large lath-shaped sections and magnetite or ilmenite); (c) Olivine-basalts; these rocks are distinguished by containing crystals of augite and olivine in a groundmass of small felspar-laths, granular augite and magnetite or ilmenite, with very little interstitial matter. They have been noticed only in two of the outcrops of toadstone.

The fragmental rocks have been shown by Mr. Bemrose to cover a much more extensive space than had been previously supposed. He has found them to be distinguished by an abundance of lapilli varying from minute fragments up to pieces about the size of a pea, and composed of a material that differs in structure from the dolerites and basalts with which the tuffs are associated. These lapilli consist largely of a glassy base more or less altered, which is generally finely vesicular and encloses abundant skeleton crystals and crystallites. The tuffs thus very closely resemble some of the Carboniferous basic tuffs of Fife, already referred to ([vol. i. p. 422]), and like these they include abundant blocks of dolerite and basalt.

2. GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TOADSTONE DISTRICT.—As the volcanic rocks of Derbyshire lie among the Carboniferous Limestones of a broad anticlinal dome, they are only exposed where these limestones have been sufficiently denuded, and as the base of the limestones is nowhere laid bare, the lowest parts of the volcanic series may be concealed. Over the tract where the toadstones can be examined they appear as bands regularly intercalated with the limestones, but varying in thickness in the course of their outcrops. As they are prone to decay, they usually form smooth grassy slopes between the limestone scarps, though isolated blocks of the dull brown igneous rocks may often be seen protruding from the surface. Now and then a harder bed of toadstone caps a hill, and thus forms a prominent feature in the landscape, but as a rule these igneous bands play no distinguishing part in the scenery, and are indeed less conspicuous than the white escarpments of limestone which overlie them.

It was the opinion of the older geologists that three distinct platforms of toadstone extend without break throughout the district, and subdivide the limestones into four portions. But this opinion does not seem to have been based on good evidence either of sequence or of continuity. Various facts were brought forward by the officers of the Geological Survey to show that the supposed persistence of the three platforms of toadstone did not really exist, but that these sheets of igneous material are found at different spots on very different horizons, and are of limited horizontal range.[31] So far as my own limited observations go, they entirely corroborate this view. There can be little doubt, I think, that the identity of certain outcrops of toadstone has been assumed, and the assumption has been carried throughout the district. The truth is that the number of successive platforms on which igneous materials appear will never be satisfactorily determined until the stratigraphy of the Derbyshire Carboniferous Limestone is worked out in detail. When the successive members of this great calcareous formation have been identified by lithological and palæontological characters over the district, it will be easy to allocate each outcrop of toadstone to its true geological horizon. When this labour has been completed, it will probably be found that instead of three, there have been many discharges of volcanic material during the deposition of the limestone series; that these have proceeded from numerous small vents, and that they are all of comparatively restricted horizontal extent. Such a detailed examination will also determine how far the toadstones include veritable sills, and on what horizons these intrusive sheets have been injected.

[31] Geol. Surv. Mem. on North Derbyshire, by Messrs. Green and Strahan (1887), p. 104.

In the meantime, we know that the lowest visible bands of toadstone are underlain by several hundred feet of limestone, thus proving that the earliest known volcanic explosions took place over the floor of the Carboniferous Limestone sea, after at least 700 or 800 feet of calcareous sediment had accumulated there. The latest traces of volcanic activity are found in a part of the Yoredale group of shales and limestones which form the uppermost member of the Carboniferous Limestone of this region. But it is not quite clear whether the vesicular diabase found there is interstratified or intrusive. Certainly no contemporaneous tuffs have yet been found among the Yoredale rocks, nor in any higher subdivision of the Carboniferous system, though coarse agglomerates marking the position of vents do traverse the Yoredale group at Kniveton.

It may be remarked that in the district over which the toadstones can be seen, two areas are recognizable, in each of which the exposures of the igneous rocks are numerous, while between them lies an intervening tract wherein there is hardly any visible outcrop of these rocks. The northern and much the more extensive area stretches from Castleton to Sheldon, while the southern spreads from Winster to Kniveton. This distribution not improbably points to the original position of the vents, and indicates a northern more numerous group of volcanic orifices, and a southern tract where the vents were fewer, or at least spread their discharges over a more limited space.

3. THE VENTS.—It had always appeared to me singular that, in ground so deeply trenched by valleys as the toadstone district of Derbyshire, no trace had been recognized of any bosses or necks from which these volcanic sheets might have been erupted. It is true that in mining operations masses of toadstone had been penetrated to a considerable depth without their bottom being reached, and the suggestion had been made that in such cases a shaft may actually have been sunk on one of the vents through which the toadstone came up.[32] One instance in particular was cited where, at Black Hillock, on Tideswell Moor, close to Peak Forest Village, a mass of toadstone was not cut through, though pierced to a depth of 100 fathoms. In that neighbourhood, however, several of the sheets of eruptive material are probably sills, and the shaft at Black Hillock may have been sunk upon the pipe or vein that supplied one or more of these intrusive sheets.

[32] Geol. Surv. Mem. on North Derbyshire, p. 134.

It was therefore with no little interest that I detected a series of vents at four separate localities, viz. Castleton, Grange Mill, Hopton, and Kniveton Wood. I have no doubt that a more extended search will bring others to light. Those observed by me are all filled with coarse agglomerate, the blocks in which are mostly composed of different lavas, sometimes with the addition of blocks of limestone, while the matrix consists mainly of lapilli of basic devitrified glass.

The most typical examples form a group of two, possibly three, vents which rise into two isolated, smooth, grassy dome-shaped hills at Grange Mill, five miles west from Matlock Bath.[33] In external form and colour, these eminences present a contrast to the scarped slopes of limestone around them. They at once recall the contours of many of the volcanic necks in Central Scotland. On examination it is found that the material composing them is a dull green agglomerate, the matrix of which is a compact substance weathering spheroidally, and full of small lapilli of minutely vesicular diabase. The larger stones consist, for the most part, of various vesicular dolerites or diabases, together with some pieces of limestone and occasionally large blocks of the latter rock, altered into a saccharoid condition. Two dykes of dolerite or basalt traverse the margin of the larger vent.

[33] This is Mr. Bemrose's outcrop, No. 46, op. cit. p. 633.

The steep sides of these agglomerate domes rise from the low ground around them to a height of 100 to 180 feet, their summits being a little more than 900 feet above the sea. The smaller neck is nearly circular, and measures about 1000 feet in diameter. The larger mass is less regular in shape, and is prolonged into such a bulge on the south-east as to suggest that its prolongation in that direction may really mark the position of a third and much smaller vent contiguous to it. The longer diameter of the larger mass is 2300 and the shorter 1300 feet.

Fig. 178.—View of two volcanic necks in the Carboniferous Limestone series, at Grange Mill, five miles west of Matlock Bath, from the north.

On the south and west sides, the surrounding limestone can be traced up to within a few feet of the edge of the agglomerate, and its strata are there found to be much jumbled and broken, while their texture is rather more crystalline than usual, though not saccharoid. The two necks are separated by a narrow valley in which no rock is visible. Their opposite declivities meet at the bottom of this hollow, and are so definitely marked off that, even in the absence of proof that they are disjoined by intervening limestone, there can be little hesitation in regarding each hill as marking a distinct vent. A wider valley extends along the eastern base of the necks, and slopes upward on its east side until it is crowned by a long escarpment of limestone, which reaches a height of 1000 feet above the sea, or about 100 feet above the valley from which it rises. Unfortunately, the bottom and slopes of this depression are thickly covered with soil, but at one or two places debris of fine tuff may be observed, and at the northern and southern ends of the hollow well-bedded green and reddish tuff appears, dipping gently below the limestone escarpment. This band of volcanic detritus evidently underlies the limestone, and forms most of the gentle slope on the east side of the valley. It may be from 70 to 100 feet thick. That it was discharged from one or both of the necks seems tolerably clear. Its material resembles that forming the matrix of the agglomerate. The general arrangement of the rocks at this interesting locality is represented in Fig. 179, which is reduced from my survey on the scale of six inches to a mile. A section across the smaller vent would show the structure represented in [Fig. 180].

Fig. 179.—Plan of necks and bedded tuff at Grange Mill, five miles west of Matlock Bath.

Fig. 180.—Section across the smaller volcanic neck and the stratified tuff in Carboniferous Limestone, Grange Mill.
1. Limestone; 2. Stratified tuff intercalated among the limestones; 3. Agglomerate.

This group of vents lies in the southern of the two tracts of the volcanic district. In the northern tract a mass of agglomerate pierces the base of the limestone escarpment about a quarter of a mile west from the entrance to the Peak Cavern at Castleton.[34] It is rudely semicircular in area, stretching down the slope until its northern extension is lost under the lower ground. The agglomerate is not well exposed, but it can be seen to be a green, granular crumbling rock, made up in great part of minutely vesicular lapilli, enclosing blocks of various diabases two feet long or more. From the abrupt way in which this agglomerate rises through the limestone, there can be little doubt that it marks the position of one of the volcanic vents of the time. As it stands on the extreme northern verge of the limestone area, the ground further north being covered with the Yoredale rocks and Millstone Grit, it is the most northerly of the whole volcanic district.

[34] This is outcrop No. 1 of Mr. Bemrose's paper, p. 625.

Along the southern margin of the limestone country a group of agglomerate masses probably marks another chain of vents. These are specially interesting, inasmuch as they abut on the Yoredale series, and may thus be looked upon as among the latest of the volcanic chimneys. One of them is seen at Hopton,[35] where along the side of the road a good section is exposed of coarse tumultuous agglomerate, having a dull green matrix, composed of green, brown, and black, minutely cellular, basic, devitrified, glassy lapilli, showing under the microscope abundant microlites and crystals or calcareous pseudomorphs of olivine, augite, and felspar, and much magnetite dust. Through this matrix are distributed blocks of slaggy basalt and dolerite. An interesting feature of this mass is the occurrence in it of some veins, two or three inches broad, of a compact black porphyritic basalt. I did not trace the relations of this agglomerate to the stratified rocks around it. But its internal structure and composition mark it out as a true neck. It extends, according to the Geological Survey map, for about half a mile along the edge of the limestone, and is represented as being separated by two faults from the Yoredale series immediately to the south. So long as the belief is entertained that the toadstones are contemporaneous outflows of lava lying on certain definite horizons, far below the summit of the limestones, the position of the Hopton agglomerate is only explicable on the assumption of some dislocation by which the Yoredale shales have been brought down against it. But when we realize that the rock is an unstratified agglomerate, probably marking the place of a volcanic vent, and therefore rising transgressively through the surrounding strata, the necessity for a fault is removed, or if a fault is inserted its existence should be justified on other evidence than the relations of the igneous rock to the surrounding strata.

[35] Geol. Surv. Mem. North Derbyshire, p. 24. This is outcrop No. 53 of Mr. Bemrose's paper, p. 635.

Four miles to the south-west of Hopton, on the slope of the hill at Kniveton Wood, another remarkable mass of agglomerate forms a rounded ridge between the two forks of a small stream.[36] Its granular matrix, like that of the other necks, consists of lapilli of minutely vesicular basic glassy lava or pumice, and encloses large and small rounded blocks of finely cellular basalt and pieces of limestone. The rock is unstratified, and in all respects resembles that of ordinary Carboniferous necks in Scotland. Its relations to the Yoredale rocks are laid bare in the channels of the streamlets. There the shales and thin limestones may be seen much broken and plicated, their curved and fractured ends striking directly at the agglomerate. They may be traced to within a yard of the agglomerate. On the Geological Survey map the igneous rock is represented as bounded by two parallel faults. But I hardly think that this explanation suffices to account for the relations of the rocks and their remarkable boundary-line, which seems to me to be undoubtedly the wall of a volcanic vent. To the east of the streams, another mass of agglomerate may mark another neck, while to the north, a third detached area of the same kind of rock, rising among the limestones, may be regarded as likewise a distinct mass. At this locality, therefore, there are two, possibly three, vents. One of these, from the way in which it cuts across the Yoredale shales and limestones, is to be assigned to a time later than the older part of the Yoredale series, and thus, like the Hopton mass, it indicates that in the south of the volcanic area eruptions did not cease with the close of the deposition of the thick limestones, but were prolonged even into the time of the Yoredale rocks.

[36] Outcrop No. 56, p. 638 of Mr. Bemrose's paper.

A further proof of the late age of these southern patches of volcanic material is shown by two bands of vesicular toadstone in the Yoredale series, a little south from the village of Kniveton. These rocks are traced on the Survey Map, and are shown in a diagram in the Memoir, where their position is sought to be explained by a system of parallel faulting.[37] I was able to trace the actual contact of the western band with the strata underneath it, and satisfied myself that there is no fault at the junction. The igneous material is regularly bedded with the Yoredale shales and limestones. Either, therefore, these bands are intercalated lava-streams or intrusive sills. If mere vesicular structure were enough to distinguish true outflowing lavas, then there could be no doubt about these Kniveton rocks. But this structure is found in so many Carboniferous sills, particularly in those thin sheets which have been injected into coals and black shales, that its presence is far from decisive. The vesicles in the Kniveton rocks are small and pea-like, tolerably uniform in size and shape, and crowded together. They are thus not at all like the irregular cavities in the ordinary cellular and scoriaceous lavas of the toadstone series.

[37] Op. cit. [p. 87].

Whether or not the question of their true relations be ever satisfactorily settled, these Kniveton bands are certainly younger than the lower portion of the Yoredale group. Their evidence thus agrees with that of the southern agglomerates in showing that the volcanic activity of this region was continued even after the thick calcareous masses of the Carboniferous Limestone series had ceased to be deposited.

Besides the six necks to which I have referred, a rock in Ember Lane, above Bonsall, probably belongs to another vent.[38] It is particularly interesting from the great preponderance of limestone fragments in it. The volcanic explosions at this locality broke up the already solidified limestones on the floor of the Carboniferous Limestone sea, and strewed them around, mingled with volcanic blocks and dust of the prevailing type.

[38] This is outcrop No. 39 of Mr. Bemrose's paper, p. 632.

When the district has been more carefully searched, other centres of eruption will no doubt be discovered. It may then be possible to depict the distribution of the active vents, and to connect with them the outflow of the bedded lavas. So far as I have been able to ascertain, there are no necks of dolerite or basalt, though, as I have shown, dykes or veins of molten rock are occasionally to be found in the agglomerates of the necks.

4. THE LAVAS AND TUFFS.—I have referred to the opinion of De la Beche that the toadstones of Derbyshire were poured out as lava-streams without any accompanying fragmentary discharges, and to the correction of this opinion by the subsequent observations of Jukes and of the Geological Survey. But though the existence of interbedded tuffs has long been known, it was not until Mr. Bemrose's more careful scrutiny that the relative importance of the tuffs among the lavas was first indicated. He has shown that a number of the bands mapped as "toadstone" are tuffs, and he has discovered other bands of tuff which have not yet been placed on any published map.

In examining the outcrops of the various toadstones of Derbyshire we learn that some of them are lavas without tuffs, probably including a number of bands, which are really sills; that others are formed of both lavas and tuffs, and that a third type shows only bedded tuff. Each of these developments will deserve separate description. But before entering into details, we may take note of the varying thicknesses of the different toadstones which have been determined by observation at the surface or by measurement underneath in mining operations. In some cases a distinct band of toadstone, separated by many feet or yards of limestone from the next band, and therefore serving to mark a separate volcanic discharge, may not exceed a yard or two in total thickness, and from that minimum may swell out to 100 feet. The majority of the bands probably range between 50 and 100 feet in thickness. In one exceptional case at Snitterton, a mass of "blackstone" is said to have been proved to be 240 feet thick, but this rock may not improbably have been a sill.[39] The true contemporaneous intercalations seem to be generally less than 100 feet in thickness.

[39] A difference is made by the mining community between "toadstone" and what is called "blackstone." The former name appears to be restricted to the amygdaloidal green and generally more or less decayed lavas; the latter, so far as I can learn, is applied to the dark, more solid and crystalline rocks. If this distinction be well founded the one name may perhaps serve to mark the open cellular lavas, the other the more compact, dark, and heavy intrusive sheets.

Fig. 181.—Section of vesicular and amygdaloidal diabase resting on Carboniferous limestone, Peak Forest Limeworks, Great Rocks Quarry.
1. Limestone with a surface dissolved into cauldron-like hollows; 2. Rotten yellow and brown clay resulting from decomposition of toadstone and white clay from the solution of the limestone—sometimes three or four feet thick; 3. Toadstone, a diabase with highly slaggy base.

(a) Lavas without Tuffs.—Examples occur of sheets of toadstone which consist entirely of contemporaneously ejected diabase, basalt or dolerite. This rock is then dull green or brown in colour, more or less earthy in texture, and irregularly amygdaloidal. The vesicles are extremely varied in size, form and distribution, sometimes expanding until the rock becomes a slaggy mass. A central more solid portion between a scoriaceous bottom and top may sometimes be observed, as at the Great Rocks Quarry, Peak Forest Limeworks ([Fig. 181]). In this, as in other examples, a remarkably hummocky and uneven surface of limestone lies below the igneous band, the calcareous rock presenting knobs and ridges, separated by cauldron-shaped cavities and clefts, some of which are several yards deep. These inequalities are filled in and covered over with a soft yellow and brown clay, varying up to three or four feet thickness, and passing upwards into the more solid toadstone. There can hardly be any doubt that this singularly uneven limestone surface is due to the solvent action of water lying between the limestone and the somewhat impervious toadstone above, and that the clay represents partly the insoluble residue of the calcareous rock, but chiefly the result of the action of the infiltrating water on the bottom of the igneous band.[40]

[40] Geological Survey Memoir on North Derbyshire, p. 20 and footnote.

Junctions of the upper surfaces of the lava-sheets with the overlying limestone show that the igneous material sometimes assumed hummocky forms, which the calcareous deposits gradually overspread and covered.[41] A good example of this kind may be observed by the roadside at the foot of Raven's Tor, Millersdale. As shown in the subjoined figure, the limestone has here been worn into a cave, the floor of which is formed by the toadstone. The latter rock, of the usual dull green, slaggy and amygdaloidal character, is covered immediately by the limestone, but I did not observe any fragments of the toadstone, nor any trace of ashy materials in the overlying calcareous strata. This section shows that after the outflow of the lava, the sedimentation of the limestone was quietly resumed, and the igneous interruption was entirely buried.

[41] Compare De la Beche, Geological Observer, pp. 559, 560, and North Derbyshire Memoir, p. 123.

Fig. 182.—View of the superposition of Carboniferous limestone upon toadstone, Raven's Tor, Millersdale (length about 100 feet).
1. Toadstone; 2. Limestone; f, Fault.

In some cases there is evidence of more than one outflow of lava in the same band of toadstone. Jukes believed that each band "was the result, not of one simultaneous ejection of igneous matter, but of several, proceeding from different foci uniting together to form one band," and he found that near Buxton, two solid beds of toadstone could be seen to have proceeded from opposite quarters towards each other without overlapping.[42]

[42] Student's Manual of Geology, 2d edit. (1862), p. 523.

In Millersdale the authors of the Geological Survey Memoir on North Derbyshire observed that a band of toadstone about 100 feet thick showed six distinct divisions, which they were disposed to regard as marking so many separate beds.[43] In Tideswell Dale, on the west side of the valley, immediately to the south of the old toadstone quarry, two bands of toadstone are seen to be separated by a few yards of limestone.

[43] Op. cit. p. 19.

(b) Lavas with Tuffs.—It will probably be found that in many, if not in most cases, the outflow of lava was preceded, accompanied or followed by fragmental discharges. As far back as 1861, Jukes noticed that a toadstone band, about 50 feet thick, near Buxton consisted of two solid beds of lava "with beds of purple and green ash, greatly decomposed into clay, both above and below each bed and between the two."[44]

[44] Op. cit. p. 523>.

Fig. 183.—Section at lime-kiln, south of Viaduct, Millersdale Station.

An interesting section, showing this intercalation of the two kinds of material is exposed at the lime-kilns beyond the southern end of the railway viaduct at Millersdale Station. Over a mass of solid blue limestone (1 in [Fig. 183]) lies a band of bright yellow and brown clay (2), varying from six inches to two feet in thickness. This may be compared with the clay found above the limestone at Peak Forest ([Fig. 181]). But it is probably a layer of highly decomposed tuff. It is succeeded by a thin band of greenish limestone (3) containing an admixture of fine volcanic detritus, and partially cut out by an irregular bed, four to eight feet thick, of a highly slaggy, greenish, decomposing, spheroidal and amygdaloidal diabase (4). This unmistakable lava-sheet is followed by a bed of green granular tuff (5), which in some places reaches a thickness of three feet, but rapidly dies out. Over a space several yards in breadth, the succeeding strata are concealed, and the next visible rock is a dark, compact dolerite which weathers spheroidally (6).

(c) Tuffs without Lavas.—Mr. Bemrose has shown that some of the bands of toadstone consist entirely of bedded tuff. In these cases, so far as the present visible outcrops allow us to judge, no outflow of lava accompanied the eruption of fragmentary materials. But that the ejection of these materials was not the result of a sudden spasmodic explosion, but of a continued series of discharges varying in duration and intensity, is indicated by the well-bedded character of the tuff and the alternation of finer and coarser layers. Large blocks of lava, two feet or more in diameter, may mark some of the more vigorous paroxysms of the vents, while the usual fine granular nature of the tuff may point to the prevailing uniformity and less violent character of the eruptions. Bands of tuff 70 feet or more in thickness, without the intercalation of any limestone or other non-volcanic intercalation, point to episodes of such continued volcanic activity that the ordinary sedimentation of the sea-bottom was interrupted, or at least masked, by the abundant fall of dust and stones.

One of the best exposures of such intercalations of bedded tuffs was pointed out to me by Mr. Bemrose, immediately to the east of the village of Litton. The matrix is crowded with the usual minutely vesicular glassy lapilli, and encloses fragments of diabase of all sizes, up to blocks more than a foot in diameter. The rock is well stratified, and the layers of coarse and fine detritus pass beneath a group of limestone beds. The actual junction is concealed under the roadway, but only two or three feet of rock cannot be seen. The lowest visible layer of limestone is nodular and contains decayed bluish fragments which may be volcanic lapilli. Immediately above the lower limestones the calcareous bands become richly fossiliferous. Some of their layers consist mainly of large bunches of coral; others are crowded with cup-corals, or are made up mainly of crinoids with abundant brachiopods, polyzoa, lamellibranchs, gasteropods and occasional fish-teeth. This remarkable profusion of marine life is interesting inasmuch as it succeeds immediately the band of volcanic ash.

Another well-marked zone of tuff, with no traceable accompaniment of lava, has already been referred to as connected with the Grangemill vents. In this case also, the limestone that lies directly upon the volcanic material is rather impure and nodular in character. The tuff itself is well bedded, perhaps from 70 to 100 feet thick and dips underneath an overlying series of marine limestones.

I did not observe thin partings of tuff and disseminated volcanic lapilli among the limestones, such as are so marked in the Lower Carboniferous formations of West Lothian, and in the Limerick basin, to be described in the following chapter. But a diligent search might discover examples of them, and thus prove that, besides the more prolonged and continuous eruptions that produced the thick bands of tuff, there were occasional feeble and intermittent explosions during the accumulation of the thick sheets of limestone. Some of the layers of "red clay" observed in shafts sunk for mining purposes may perhaps represent such spasmodic discharges of fine fragmental material.

5. THE SILLS.—No attempt has yet been made to determine whether and to what extent the toadstone bands include true intrusive sheets. My own brief examination of the ground does not warrant me in making any positive statement on this subject. I can hardly doubt, however, that some, perhaps not a few, of the toadstone bands are really sills. In the accounts of these rocks contained in the mining records a distinction, as already remarked, appears to have been generally drawn between "toadstone" and "blackstone." The latter term is applied to the black, fresh, more coarsely crystalline, and generally non-amygdaloidal rocks, which, so far as I have been able to examine them, have the general external and many of the internal characters of the Carboniferous sills of Central Scotland. At Snitterton near Matlock one of these "blackstones," as already mentioned, is said to have been found to be 240 feet thick.[45]

[45] North Derbyshire Memoir, p. 23.

It is stated that the toadstones, though subject to great variations in thickness, are never seen to cut across the limestones.[46] But I suspect that proofs of intrusion and transgression will be found when diligently sought for. It appeared to me that the dark, compact, crystalline dolerite, which was formerly quarried in the middle of Tideswell Dale, may be separated from the vesicular toadstone of that valley, which is undoubtedly a true lava-flow, and that it does not always occupy the same horizon there, being sometimes below and sometimes above the amygdaloid. Where it rests on a band of red clay the latter rock has been made columnar to a depth of nine feet.[47] Alteration of this kind is very rare among the Carboniferous bedded lavas, but is by no means infrequent in the case of sills. But the most important proof of alteration which I have myself observed occurs at Dale Farm near the village of Peak Forest, where the limestone above a coarsely crystalline dolerite has been converted into a white saccharoid marble for about two yards from the junction.

[46] Op. cit. [p. 123].

[47] J. M. Mello, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvi. (1871), p. 701.

3. THE ISLE OF MAN

Rising from the middle of the Irish Sea, within sight of each of the three kingdoms, with a history and associations so distinct, yet so intimately linked with those of the rest of Britain, this interesting island presents in its geological structure features that connect it alike with England, Scotland and Ireland, while at the same time it retains a marked individuality in regard to some of the rocks that form its framework. Its great central ridge of grits and slates, which still rises 2000 feet above the sea in the summit of Snaefell, must have formed a tract of dry land in Carboniferous time, until it sank under sea-level, and was buried beneath the Carboniferous and later formations. Along the southern margin of this ancient land, a relic of the floor of the Carboniferous sea has been preserved in a small basin of Carboniferous Limestone which covers about seven or eight square miles. This remnant has a special interest in geological history, for it has preserved the records of a series of volcanic eruptions which took place contemporaneously with the deposition of the Carboniferous Limestone.

The geology of the Isle of Man was sketched in outline by J. F. Berger,[48] J. Macculloch,[49] and J. S. Henslow,[50] and was afterwards more fully illustrated by J. G. Cumming.[51] To the last-named observer we owe the recognition of true intercalated volcanic rocks among the calcareous formations of the southern end of the island. These rocks have subsequently been studied in greater detail by a number of geologists. An excellent general account of them was published in 1874 by Mr. John Horne, of the Geological Survey.[52] A few years later some further observations on them were prepared by J. Clifton Ward.[53] More recently their petrography has been studied by Messrs. E. Dickson, P. Holland and F. Rutley,[54] and in more detail by Mr. B. Hobson.[55] To some of the observations of these writers reference will be made in the succeeding pages. During the progress of the Geological Survey in the Isle of Man, the rocks in question have been mapped in detail by Mr. A. Strahan and Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, and I have had an opportunity of examining the coast-sections with the last-named geologist. The following description of these sections is taken mainly from my field note-book. The full details will appear in the official Memoirs.

[48] Trans. Geol. Soc. 1st ser. vol. ii. (1814), p. 29.

[49] Western Islands of Scotland (1819), vol. ii. p. 571.

[50] Trans. Geol. Soc. 1st ser. vol. v. (1821), p. 482.

[51] The Isle of Man (1848), chap. x.

[52] Trans. Geol. Soc. Edin. ii. (1874), p. 332.

[53] Geol. Mag. 1880, p. 4.

[54] Proc. Liverpool Geol. Soc. vol. vi. (1888-89), p. 123.

[55] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xlvii. (1891), p. 432. This paper was reprinted with additions and corrections in Yn Lioar Manninagh, Douglas, Isle of Man, vol. i. No. 10, April 1892.

It may be remarked at the outset that the last outcrop of the plateau-lavas of the Solway basin occurs only 60 miles from the south end of the Isle of Man, at the foot of the hills of Galloway, the blue outline of which can be seen from that island. The distance from the Manx volcanoes to the nearest of the puys of Liddesdale is about 100 miles. Though the fragment which has been left of the ejections is too small to warrant any confident parallelism, there appears to be reason to believe that, alike in geological age and in manner of activity, the Manx volcanoes may be classed with the type of the puys.

The Carboniferous strata of the Isle of Man lie in a small trough at the south end of the island. The lowest members of the series consist of red conglomerates and sandstones, which pass upward into dark limestones full of the characteristic fossils of the Carboniferous Limestone. As the bottom of the basin is on the whole inclined seawards, the highest strata occur along the extreme southern coast. It is there that the volcanic rocks are displayed. They occupy a narrow strip less than two miles in length, which is almost entirely confined to the range of cliffs and the ledges of the foreshore. Yet though thus extremely limited in area, they have been so admirably dissected along the coast, that they furnish a singularly ample body of evidence bearing on the history of Carboniferous volcanic action.

Unfortunately the bottom of the volcanic group is nowhere visible. At the east or lower end of the series, exposed on the shore, an agglomerate with its dykes appears to truncate the Castletown Limestones. No trace of any tuff has been noticed among these lower limestones. We may infer that the volcanic activity began after they were deposited. The highest accessible portions of the volcanic group, as Mr. Horne showed, are clearly exposed on the coast at Poyll Vaaish, intercalated in and overlying the dark limestones of that locality ([Fig. 184]), which have been assigned, from their fossil contents, to the upper part of the Carboniferous Limestone series.[56] The Manx volcanoes may therefore be regarded as having probably been in eruption during the later portion of the Carboniferous Limestone period.

[56] R. Etheridge jun., in Mr. Horne's paper above cited.

Fig. 184.—Limestones passing under stratified tuffs, Poyll Vaaish, Isle of Man.

Owing to irregularities of inclination, the thickness of the volcanic group can only be approximately estimated. It is probably not less than 200 or 300 feet. But as merely the edge of the group lies on the land, the volcanic rocks may reach a considerably greater extent and thickness under the sea.

The volcanic materials consist mainly of bedded tuffs, but include also several necks of agglomerate and a number of dykes and sills. So far as I have observed, they comprise no true lava-streams.[57] These Manx tuffs present many of the familiar features of those belonging to the puy-eruptions of Central Scotland, but with some peculiarities worthy of attention. They are on the whole distinctly bedded, and as their inclination is generally in a westerly direction, an ascending order can be traced in them from the eastern end of the section to the highest parts of the group associated with the Poyll Vaaish limestones. Their colour is the usual dull yellowish-green, varying slightly in tint with changes in the texture of the materials, the palest bands consisting of the finest dust or volcanic mud. Great differences in the size of their fragmentary constituents may be observed in successive beds, coarse and fine bands rapidly alternating, with no admixture of non-volcanic sediment, though occasional layers of fine ash or mudstone, showing distinct current-bedding, may be noticed.

[57] The occurrence of intercalated lavas has been described in this series, but, as I shall show in the sequel, they are probably intrusive masses.

Pauses in the succession of eruptions are marked by the intercalation of seams of limestone or groups of limestone, shale and black impure chert. Such interstratifications are sometimes curiously local and interrupted. They may be observed to die out rapidly, thereby allowing the tuff above and below them to unite into one continuous mass. They seem to have been accumulated in hollows of the tuff during somewhat prolonged intervals of volcanic quiescence, and to have been suddenly brought to an end by a renewal of the eruptions. There are some four or five such intercalated groups of calcareous strata in the thick series of tuffs, and we may regard them as marking the chief pauses in the continuity or energy of the volcanic explosions.

An attentive examination of these interpolated sedimentary deposits affords some interesting information as to the submarine conditions in which the eruptions took place. The intercalations, sometimes 12 feet or more in thickness, consist mainly of dark limestones, enclosing the usual Carboniferous Limestone fossils; black shales, sometimes showing very fragmentary and much macerated remains of ferns and other land-plants; and black impure argillaceous chert or flint, arranged in bands interposed between the other strata, and also in detached lumps and strings. The dark flaggy limestones and black shales may be paralleled lithologically with those of Castletown and Poyll Vaaish. Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that they represent the contemporaneous type of marine sediment that was gathering on the sea-floor outside the volcanic area, and which during intervals of quiescence or feeble eruptivity spread more or less continuously into that area. The thick mass of tuff must thus have been strictly contemporaneous with a group of calcareous muddy and siliceous deposits which gathered over the bottom beyond the limits of the showers of ashes.

Fig. 185.—Section of tuff, showing intercalations of black impure chert, west of Closenychollagh Point, near Castletown, Isle of Man.

One of the most singular features of these sedimentary intercalations is the occurrence of the black cherty material. It may generally be observed best developed at the bottom and top of each group of included strata. Looking at the lumps of this substance scattered through the adjoining tuffs, we might at first take them for ejected fragments, and such no doubt may have been the derivation of some of them. But further examination will show that, as a rule, they are of a concretionary nature, and were formed in situ contemporaneously with or subsequent to the deposition of the tuffs. The accompanying section ([Fig. 185]) represents the manner in which the chert is distributed through two or three square yards of tuff overlying one of the calcareous groups. The material has been segregated not only into lumps, but into veins and bands, which, though on the whole parallel with the general stratification-planes of the deposits, sometimes run irregularly in tongues or strings across these planes, as shown in [Fig. 186], where the dark chert band which overlies the limestones and shales sends a tongue upwards for several inches into the overlying tuff.

That these interstratified calcareous and muddy strata were laid down in water of some considerable depth may be inferred from their general lithological characters. The dark carbonaceous aspect of the limestones points to the probable intermingling of much decayed vegetation with the remains of the calcareous organisms of which these strata chiefly consist. The thin unimportant bands or partings of dark shale show that only the finest muddy sediment reached the quiet depths in which the strata were deposited, while the macerated fern-fragments suggest a long flotation and ultimate entombment of terrestrial vegetation borne seawards from some neighbouring land.

Fig. 186.—Section of intercalated dark limestone, shale and chert in the tuff south of Poyll Vaaish Bay, Isle of Man.
1. Limestones and shales; 2. Chert; 3. Tuff.

The cherty bands and nodules, like the flints of the chalk, bear their testimony to the quiet character of the sedimentation in rather deep water beyond the limits within which the sediment from the land was mainly accumulated on the sea-bottom. The origin of these siliceous parts of the series of deposits has still to be investigated. Whether or not they are to be referred to organic causes like chalk-flints, and the radiolarian cherts of the Lower Silurian system, they furnish a fresh example of the remarkable association of such siliceous material with volcanic phenomena, which has now been observed in many widely separated areas all over the world.

If we next turn to the stratification of the tuffs, we obtain further evidence of undisturbed conditions of deposition on the sea-floor. The bedding of these volcanic masses, though distinct, appears for the most part to be due rather to the eruption and settlement of alternately finer and coarser detritus than to any marked drifting and rearrangement of these materials by current-action into different layers. Throughout the series of tuffs, indeed, there is, on the whole, a notable absence of any structure suggestive of strong currents or of wave-action in the dispersal and reassortment of the volcanic detritus. The ashes and stones were discharged in such a way as to gather irregularly over the sea-floor into ridges and hollows. There does not seem to have been sufficient movement in the bottom water to level down these inequalities of surface, for we find that they remained long enough to allow twelve feet or more of calcareous and siliceous ooze to gather in the hollows, while the intervening ridges still stood uneffaced until buried under the next fall of ashes. At rare intervals some transient current or deeper wave may have reached the bottom and spread out the volcanic detritus lying there. Such exceptional disturbances of the still water are not improbably indicated by occasional well-defined stratification, and even by distinct false-bedding, in certain finer layers of tuff.

The materials of the tuffs are remarkably uniform in character and conspicuously volcanic in origin. With the exception of occasional blocks of limestone, which range up to masses several feet, and occasionally several yards, in diameter, the dust, lapilli and included stones consist entirely of fragmentary basic lava, so persistent in its lithological features that we may regard its slightly different varieties as merely marking different conditions of the same rock. The accumulation of pumiceous ash in this southern coast of the Isle of Man is one of the most remarkable in Britain. As Mr. Hobson has well shown, the matrix of this tuff consists of irregular lapilli, representing what may have been various conditions of solidification in one original volcanic magma. This magma he has described as an "augite-porphyrite" or olivine-basalt. Some of the lapilli, as he noted, consist of a pumice "crowded with vesicles which occupy more space than the solid part"; others show nearly as many vesicles, but the glass is made brown by the number of its fine dust-like inclusions; a third type presents the cells and cell-walls in nearly equal proportions. The same observer found that where the substance is most cellular the vesicles, fairly uniform in size, measure about a tenth of a millimetre in longest diameter.

An interesting feature of the tuffs is the abundant occurrence of loose felspar crystals throughout the whole group up to the highest visible strata. These crystals, sometimes nearly an inch in length, appear conspicuously as white spots on weathered surfaces of the rock. They are so much decayed, however, that it is difficult to extract them entire. On the most cursory inspection they are observed to enclose blebs of a greenish substance like the material that fills up the vesicles in the pumiceous fragments and in the pieces of cellular lava.

I have not ascertained the original source of these scattered felspars. In one of the dykes on the north side of the agglomerate at Scarlet Point, as was pointed out by Mr. Hobson, large crystals of plagioclase occur in the melaphyre, but the felspars in the tuffs and agglomerates differ so much from these that we cannot suppose them to have come from the explosion of such a rock. I failed to detect any other mineral in detached crystals in the tuffs, but a more diligent search might reveal such, and afford some grounds for speculating on the probable nature of the magma from the explosion of which the scattered crystals were derived. It is at least certain that this magma must have included a large proportion of plagioclase crystals.

Between the lapilli and the minute pumice-dust that constitute the matrix of this tuff much calcite may be detected. Though this mineral may have been partly derived from the decay of the felspar in the lava-fragments, I believe that it is mainly to be attributed to the intermingling of fine calcareous ooze with the ash accumulated on the sea-floor. A more remarkable association of the same kind will be described in later pages from King's County in Ireland. That abundant calcareous organisms peopled the sea in which the Manx Carboniferous volcanoes were active is shown by the contemporaneously deposited limestones. The tuffs themselves are occasionally fossiliferous. Species of Spirifer, Productus and other brachiopods, together with broken stems of encrinites, may be found in them, and doubtless the diffused calcite, though now crystalline, as in the limestones, and showing no organic structure, owes its presence to the detritus of once living organisms.

The stones imbedded in the tuff consist almost exclusively of slightly different varieties of the same pale, always vesicular rock, and sometimes pass into a coarse slag. They vary up to six feet or more in length. In many cases, they appear to have been derived from the disruption of already solidified lava, for their vesicles are not elongated or arranged with reference to the form of the block, but have been broken across and appear in section on the outer surface. In other instances, however, the cavities are large and irregular in the centre of the block, while on the outside they are smaller and are drawn out round the rudely spherical shape of the mass, as in true volcanic bombs.

The limestone fragments enclosed in the tuff include pieces of the dark carbonaceous and of the pale encrinal varieties. In no case did I observe any sensible alteration of these fragments. They seem to have been derived from material disrupted and ejected during the opening of successive vents, and not to have been exposed for any considerable time to the metamorphic influence of volcanic heat and vapours.

Narrow though the strip of volcanic material is along the south coast of the Isle of Man, it has fortunately preserved for us some of the vents from which the tuffs were ejected. A group of these vents, three or four in number, may be traced along the shore in a general W.N.W. and E.S.E. line from Scarlet Point for rather more than a mile. Their margins are in some places exceedingly well defined. The most striking example of this feature occurs in the most westerly vent, where a neck of remarkably coarse volcanic agglomerate rises vertically through well-bedded, westerly-dipping tuff ([Fig. 187]). In other portions of their boundaries no sharp line can be drawn between the material filling the vent and that of the surrounding tuffs. Hence it is difficult to define precisely the form and size of the vents. I am inclined to believe from this indefiniteness of outline, and from the remarkable structure of the dykes, to which I shall afterwards refer, that the presently visible parts of these necks must lie close to the mouths of the original vents, if indeed they do not actually contain parts of the craters and of their surrounding walls.

The materials that have filled up the eruptive vents consist chiefly of agglomerate, but partly also of intrusive portions of vesicular lava. The agglomerate is composed of similar materials to the tuffs. Its matrix shows the same extraordinarily abundant fine greenish-grey basic pumiceous lapilli, with the same kind of plentiful loose felspar-crystals. The large blocks of lava, too, resemble in composition and structure those of the bedded tuffs, but greatly exceed them in size and abundance.

Besides the fragments of vesicular lava, there occur also occasional blocks of limestone. Some of these are several yards in length. Messrs. Strahan and Lamplugh have mapped a large mass of limestone at the Scarlet vent, which, so far as can be observed, lies in the agglomerate—a large cake of white limestone with pebbles of quartz, which has probably been broken off from some underlying bed and carried up in the chimney of the volcano.

As a rule the agglomerate is a tumultuous, unstratified mass. But in many places it shows lines of bedding and, as already stated, passes outward into ordinary bedded tuff, the number and size of the ejected blocks rapidly diminishing. Where this transition occurs we seem to see a remnant of the base of the actual volcanic cone. Thus, in the most westerly vent already cited, while the wall of the vent has been laid bare on the side next the sea, so that the agglomerate on the beach descends vertically through the surrounding bedded tuffs, on the western side the cliffs have preserved a portion of the material that accumulated outside the orifice ([Fig. 187]). In this section we observe that the coarse agglomerate which fills up the main part of the vent has been left with a hummocky, uneven surface, and that a subsequent and perhaps feebler eruption of finer material has covered over these inequalities, and has extended to the left above the fine tuffs through which the agglomerate has been drilled.

Fig. 187.—Section of part of a volcanic neck on shore to the south-east of Poyll Vaaish Bay, Isle of Man.

Fig. 188.—Section of successive discharges and disturbances within a volcanic vent. Scarlet Point, Isle of Man.

Again, in the largest of the vents, that near Scarlet Point, still clearer proof of successive eruptions and dislocations within a volcanic chimney may be noticed. At one point the accompanying section (Fig. 188) has been laid bare by the waves. The oldest accumulation is a fine green granular tuff (a), rudely and faintly arranged in layers inclined at high angles, like the fine materials in many of the vents of the basin of the Firth of Forth. This peculiar stratification, due not to the assortment of materials in water, but to the deposition of coarser and finer detritus by successive explosions, and to subsequent slipping or tilting, is a characteristic feature of the detritus which has filled up ancient volcanic funnels. A later explosion from some adjacent part of the same vent has given rise to the discharge of a coarse agglomerate (b), which with blocks sometimes six feet long, overspreads the earlier material. A third detrital accumulation in the same vent, consisting of a firm brecciated tuff (c) with much calcite in its matrix, has been brought down by a slip (f) which cuts across both of the previous deposits. A broad dyke (d) of vesicular diabase (augite-porphyry) traverses the vent, and is probably later than any of the other rocks in the section.

I will conclude this account of the Manx Carboniferous volcanic rocks with a brief reference to the intrusive masses which form a prominent feature of the coast-line. From the picturesque headland of Scarlet Point the broad dyke which forms that promontory may be traced for some distance westwards. Several other parallel dykes run in the same direction which, it will be observed, is also that of the chain of vents. It might be said that the vents are, as it were, strung together by a line of dykes. These eruptive masses traverse both the agglomerates and the bedded tuffs. They probably belong, therefore, to a comparatively late part of the volcanic history. That they are truly intrusive and not lava-flows is, I think, clearly shown by their vertical walls which descend through the surrounding rocks, and by the greater closeness of their texture, as well as the diminution in the size of their vesicles along the contact surfaces. But it must be admitted that in their remarkably developed vesicular structure they look more like streams of lava than ordinary dykes.

It is this structure which gives to these dykes their peculiar interest. Bands of vesicles, from an inch or less to several inches in breadth, run along the dykes parallel to the outer walls. Unlike the familiar rows of little amygdaloidal cells in ordinary basalt dykes, such as those of the Tertiary series in Scotland, these vesicles, though small and pea-like in the narrower bands towards the margins of the dykes, became so large, numerous, and irregular in the broader and more central bands, that the rock passes there into a rough slag.

Fig. 189.—Section of dyke and sill in the tuffs west of Scarlet Point, Isle of Man.

While the intrusive material has for the most part risen in the form of dykes, in one part of the coast-section, a little to the west of Scarlet Point, it has been injected as a sill among the bedded tuffs.[58] A section taken at this locality gives the structure represented in [Fig. 189]. On the north side of the great dyke, the strata of tuff which dip under it, roll over and support an outlying sheet of the same material. The slaggy structure of parts of this sill give it some resemblance to a true lava-flow. But it is the same structure which can be seen in the dykes, while the closer grain along the contact-surface further connects it with these intrusions.

[58] It is this sheet which has been described as a lava-stream.

There is, however, a peculiarity about the development of the vesicular structure in this sill which I have not observed anywhere else. If we examine the southern side of the crag near its eastern end we observe that the successive bands of vesicles are arranged in the same direction as the surface of contact with the underlying tuffs, precisely as they are ranged in dykes parallel to the bounding walls. So far the structure is quite normal. But, moving a few yards westwards, we find that the bands begin to curve, and, instead of following the contact surface, strike it first obliquely and then at right angles, until we have the structure shown in [Fig. 191]. The bands here vary from less than an inch to more than a foot in breadth, and where broadest assume a slaggy texture. I sought in vain for any evidence of subsequent disturbance such as might have truncated these parallel rows of vesicles and pushed the rock bodily over the tuffs. The perfect parallelism of the bands with the surface of the tuff at the east end, and the absence of all trace of a thrust-plane at the base of the sill, seem to show that, though the rows of vesicles were undoubtedly at first arranged parallel to the surfaces between which the intrusion took place, the mass, before completely consolidating and coming to rest, was ruptured, and a portion of it was driven onwards at right angles to its previous line of movement.

A consideration of the singularly slag-like structure of the injected masses in the tuffs and agglomerates leads to the conclusion that though what we now see of these rocks did not actually flow out at the sea-bottom in streams of lava, it was intruded so close to the surface that the imprisoned vapours had opportunity to expand, as in superficial outflows.[59] This inference is in accord with that derived from an examination of the necks, wherein we find evidence of the probable survival of parts of the actual craters and volcanic cones.

[59] As illustrative of the occurrence of the vesicular structure in superficial intrusions, I may again cite the dyke which cuts the ash of the outer crater-wall of the Puy de Pariou in Auvergne. The andesite of this dyke is in places as vesicular as the lava-stream with which it was doubtless connected, but the vesicles have been flattened and drawn out parallel to the walls of the dyke. In this instance it is quite certain that there could never have been any great depth of detrital material above the fissure into which the material of the dyke was injected (see [vol. i. p. 66]).

As the records of the earliest eruptions during the Carboniferous Limestone period in the district of the Isle of Man are concealed, so also those of the last of the series lie under the sea. Where the highest visible tuffs overlie the Poyll Vaaish limestones they show no change in the nature of the materials ejected, or in the energy of eruption. They lie so abruptly on the dark calcareous deposits as to show that a considerable pause in volcanic activity was followed by a violent explosion. The same abundant grey-green pumice, the same kind of loose crystals of felspar, the same type of lava-blocks and bombs as had characterized the foregoing eruptions remained as marked at the end. But the further volcanic records cannot be perused, and we are left to speculate whether the coast-sections reveal almost the whole chronicle, or if they merely lay before us the early chapters of a great volcanic history of which the main records lie buried under the waves of the Irish Sea.

4. EAST SOMERSET

Various limited outcrops of igneous rocks have long been known to occur in the eastern part of Somerset. The largest of these lies in the midst of the Old Red Sandstone, on the crest of the axis of the Mendip Hills, between Downhead and Beacon Hill. Smaller patches occur in the Carboniferous Limestone near Wrington Warren, on the north side of Middle Hope, on Worle Hill and at Uphill. These rocks have been mapped as intrusive, though some of them have been described as conglomeratic or as volcanic breccias. While some of the masses are probably intrusive, others appear to be truly contemporaneous with the deposition of the Carboniferous Limestone. The highly vesicular basalt of Middle Hope looks much more like a superficial lava than an intrusion. Mr. Aveline gave a section showing three alternations of limestone and "igneous rock" at Middle Hope. A recent examination of that coast-line by Mr. A. Strahan shows that there are undoubted tuffs interstratified with the calcareous strata. There is thus proof that one or more small volcanic vents were in eruption on the floor of the Carboniferous Limestone sea in the neighbourhood of Weston-super-Mare.[60]

[60] See Geological Survey Memoir "On East Somerset," by H. B. Woodward, 1876, and authorities there cited. Mr. Aveline's section above referred to will be found on [p. 22].

5. DEVONSHIRE

The change from the typical Old Red Sandstone of South Wales to the Devonian system of Devonshire, to which I have already referred, is hardly more striking than the contrast between the Carboniferous formations of these two areas.[61] The well-marked threefold subdivisions of Carboniferous Limestone, Millstone Grit and Coal-measures, so persistent throughout Britain, and nowhere more typically developed than in South Wales, are replaced in a distance of less than forty miles by the peculiar "Culm-measures" of Devonshire—a series of black shales, grey sandstones and thin limestones and lenticular seams of impure coal (culm), which are not only singularly unlike in original characters to the ordinary Carboniferous formations, but have been made still more unlike by the extensive and severe cleavage to which the Palæozoic rocks of Devon and Cornwall have been subjected. That these Culm-measures are truly Carboniferous is made abundantly clear by their fossil contents, though it has not yet been possible to determine how far they include representatives of the great stratigraphical subdivisions in other parts of the country.

[61] In the centre of England numerous outlying areas of igneous rocks are found in the Carboniferous Limestone, Millstone Grit and Coal-measures. These will be considered by themselves in Chap. xxxii.

It is to De la Beche that geology owes the first intimation of the occurrence of interstratified igneous rocks in the Carboniferous series of Devonshire. As far back as the year 1834, in his singularly suggestive treatise, Researches in Theoretical Geology, this eminent geologist expressed his opinion that not only were the "trappean" bands regularly intercalated in the sedimentary series and continuously traceable with the general stratification, but that they occurred at various localities in such a manner as to raise the suspicion that these points may mark some of the centres of eruption. He particularly cited the example of Brent Tor as a remarkable volcanic-looking hill, composed in part of a conglomerate "having every appearance of volcanic cinders."[62]

[62] Op. Cit. [p. 384].

In his subsequently published Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devonshire and West Somerset, De la Beche dwelt in more detail on the results of his study of these rocks, which he had traced out on the ground and expressed upon the maps of the Ordnance Geological Survey.[63] Hardly any additions have since been made to our knowledge of the field-relations of the rocks. It is to the maps and Report of De la Beche that we must turn for nearly all the published information on the subject. I shall therefore give here a summary of what can be gathered from these publications.

[63] Sheets 22, 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, 32 and 33.

In tracing the limits of the Culm-measures, De la Beche found that no well-defined line could be drawn between these strata and the "grauwacke" or Devonian formations underneath. The Carboniferous series lies in a great trough, of which the axis runs nearly east and west, so that the lowest members of the series rise along the northern and southern margins. But De la Beche was struck with one remarkable contrast between the two opposite sides of the trough—a contrast which marks the Devonian as well as the Carboniferous formations of this region. On the south side an abundant and persistent group of intercalated bands of igneous, or as he called them, "trappean," materials can be followed along the whole line of boundary, while no such group occurs on the north side. He found these bands to be lenticular, traceable sometimes for a number of miles, then dying out and reappearing on the same or other horizons. He mapped them the whole way from Boscastle on the west to near Exeter on the east, and found that though the individual sheets might be short, the trappean zone was continuous as far as the southern margin of the Carboniferous series could be seen, except where it had been broken through by the great granitic mass of Dartmoor. He ascertained that the intercalated trappean rocks are not confined to the Culm-measures, but occur also in the contiguous portions of the "grauwacke" or Devonian system.

But further, he clearly recognized that the bands of igneous material which he mapped included both "greenstones," together with other varieties of massive eruptive rocks, and also volcanic ash or tuff, though he did not attempt to separate these out upon the maps, but contented himself with representing them all under the same colour. He admitted that some doubt might be entertained as to the age of the greenstones, for some of them might be intrusive and therefore later than the sedimentary deposits between which they lie. But he contended that there could be no uncertainty with regard to the trappean ash or tuff, which being regularly interstratified in the Carboniferous series, must be contemporaneous with it. He pointed out that many of the greenstones, as well as fragments in the conglomerates or ashes, were highly vesicular and must originally have been in the condition of pumice.

As an illustration of the centres of eruption from which these materials were ejected, De la Beche drew special attention once more to the conspicuous eminence of Brent Tor and the rocks in its neighbourhood. His remarks on this subject are well worthy of being quoted—"The idea that in the vicinity of Brent Tor a volcano has been in action, producing effects similar to those produced by active volcanoes, forcibly presents itself. That this volcano projected ashes, which, falling into adjacent water, became interstratified with the mud, silt and sand there depositing, seems probable. That greenstones and other solid trappean rocks constituted the lavas of that period and locality, here and there intermingled with the ash, appears also a reasonable hypothesis. Upon the whole there seems as good evidence as could be expected that to the north and north-west of Tavistock, ash, cinders and liquid melted rocks were ejected and became intermingled with mud, silt and sand during this ancient geological epoch, corresponding with the phenomena exhibited in connection with volcanoes of the present day, more particularly when they adjoin or are situated in the sea, or other waters where ejected ashes, cinders and lava can be intermingled with ordinary mud, silt and sand."[64]

[64] Op. cit. [p. 122].

It remains for some future observer to fill up the outlines thus sketched by De la Beche, by tracing the respective areas of lavas and tuffs, distinguishing the various petrographical types, separating the intrusive from the interstratified sheets, identifying the necks and bosses that may mark centres of eruption, and expressing these various details upon maps on a sufficiently large scale.

A serious difficulty in this research arises from the effect of the profound alteration which has been produced on the igneous rocks by the cleavage of the region. Many of the "greenstones" have been so cleaved as to become slaty or almost schistose. De la Beche recognized this change and wrote of the "schistose trappean ash." A result of this metamorphism has been to impart to rocks originally massive the same fissile structure as the adjacent slates possess; and in this condition it is often hardly possible to distinguish between "greenstone" and fine-grained "ash." There can indeed be little doubt that among these Carboniferous volcanic rocks, as we have seen to be the case with those of the Devonian system in the same region, many lavas or sills have been mapped as tuffs.

The chief additions to our knowledge of the Carboniferous volcanic group of Devonshire since the time of De la Beche have been made by Mr. F. Rutley, Mr. W. A. Ussher and General M'Mahon. Mr. Rutley[65] has endeavoured to trace the respective areas occupied by the different varieties of volcanic rocks in the district around Brent Tor, near Tavistock, and to show the probable connection of the successive bands of lavas and tuffs with a central vent of discharge situated at that hill. He believes that these bands occur on four different horizons in the sedimentary series. He has studied the microscopic structure of the rocks, which in his view include "amphibolites, gabbros, basalts, pitchstones and schistose ashes, or clastic rocks of a doubtful nature."[66]

[65] "The Eruptive Rocks of Brent Tor and its Neighbourhood," Mem. Geol. Surv. 1878. "On the Schistose Volcanic Rocks occurring on the west of Dartmoor, with some Notes on the Structure of the Brent Tor Volcano," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxvi. (1880), p. 286.

[66] "The Eruptive Rocks of Brent Tor," p. 45.

Mr. Ussher has re-mapped the tract of Culm-measures on the east side of the Dartmoor granite, besides visiting some of the other areas outside of the granite mass. While confirming the general accuracy of De la Beche's survey, he has been able to improve the mapping by inserting more detail, separating especially the tuffs from the "greenstones." The latter have been found by him to be mostly dolerites, some of which, from their parallelism the bands of tuff, may be in his opinion contemporaneous lavas, though the majority of them are evidently intrusive. The tuffs are regularly interstratified among the Culm-measures, their most important band in this district having an average breadth of about 100 yards, and being traceable for at least two miles, possibly considerably further.[67] In going over this tract with Mr. Ussher I was led to regard many of the sheets of diabase (dolerite) or gabbro as true sills and bosses. Most of them occur as short lenticular or oval patches tolerably numerous, but not traceable for more than a short distance, though a connection may often exist which cannot be detected by the scanty evidence on the surface. One sheet which has been followed by Mr. Ussher from Combe to beyond Ashton, a distance of nearly two miles, presents in the centre a somewhat coarsely crystalline texture which rapidly gives way to a much closer grain, and the rock then becomes highly vesicular. It is overlain with dark Culm-shales and bands of fine shaly tuff, passing upward into a granular tuff. Some layers of this tuff assume a finely foliated appearance by the development of pale leek-green folia, which show slickensided surfaces parallel with the bedding. The rock then presents one of the usual appearances of schalstein. This structure seems obviously due to mechanical movement along the planes of stratification.

[67] "The British Culm-measures," Proc. Somerset Archæol. and Nat. His. Soc. xxxviii. (1892), p. 161.

Bands of black chert and cherty shale are interpolated among the tuffs, which also contain here and there nodular lumps of similar black impure earthy chert—an interesting association like that alluded to as occurring in the Carboniferous volcanic series of the Isle of Man, and like the occurrence of the radiolarian cherts with the Lower Silurian volcanic series already described.[68]

[68] Cherts containing numerous species of radiolaria have recently been found by Dr. Hinde and Mr. Howard Fox to form an important part of the Lower Culm-measures of Devonshire, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. li. (1895), p. 609.

The volcanic belt in the valley of the Teign can be followed for about two miles. It is undoubtedly interstratified among the dark Culm-measures, which are distinctly seen dipping under and overlying it.

General M'Mahon has recently shown what may be done by careful and detailed examination of the ground broadly sketched in by De la Beche. He chose for study a strip of "greenstone" shown on the Geological Survey Map to extend for about three and a half miles along the north-west margin of the Dartmoor granite. He has found that what is represented under one wash of colour on that map includes both tuffs and lavas. The tuffs, in spite of the alteration which they appear to have undergone from the proximity of the great granite mass, are found by microscopic investigation to be made up of fine volcanic dust containing minute lapilli of various lavas. Sometimes as many as six or seven different kinds of lava may be represented in the same microscopic slide. These include felsitic or rhyolitic and trachytic rocks together with fragments of dark glassy lava full of magnetite dust. With the tuffs are intercalated sheets of felsite and trachyte. In the same district coarse volcanic agglomerate occur, made up of blocks of different lavas and pieces of different sedimentary rocks.[69]

[69] Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. l. (1894), p. 338.

These observations are of special interest, inasmuch as they point to the eruption of a much more acid series of volcanic lavas and tuffs than had previously been known to exist in the Culm-measures. Until the ground has been more accurately mapped, it is impossible to say whether these rocks are older or younger than those that lie around Brent Tor, a few miles to the south-west. General M'Mahon has noted the presence of more basic eruptive rocks in the same district. He specially cites the occurrence of mica-diorite, of basaltic lavas altered into a serpentinous mass, and of a dolerite which may possibly mark the actual vent of the old Brent Tor volcano. His observations on the influence of the Dartmoor granite in inducing new mineral rearrangements in the igneous rocks of the Culm-measure series are full of interest.

CHAPTER XXX
THE CARBONIFEROUS VOLCANOES OF IRELAND

King's County—The Limerick Basin—The Volcanic Breccias of Doubtful Age in County Cork.

Although the Carboniferous system spreads over by far the larger part of the surface of Ireland, and is laid bare in many thousands of natural and artificial sections, it displays undoubtedly contemporaneous igneous rocks, so far as at present known, at only one locality—the region around Limerick. A second district, however, lies in King's County, where some vents occur which may be of Carboniferous age, and of which a description will be given in the following pages. That the relics of volcanic action should be so few, while the exposures of the Carboniferous formations are so numerous and so completely disclose the geological history of the whole system, must be regarded as good evidence that while volcanoes abounded and continued long active in Scotland and in parts of the Centre and South-west of England, they hardly appeared at all in Ireland. It is worthy of remark, also, that the Irish eruptions belong to the time of the Carboniferous Limestone—a period distinguished by volcanic activity in Scotland and England—that the nature of the materials erupted bears a close resemblance to that of the lavas and tuffs of the sister island, and that the manner of their eruption finds a close counterpart in the Puy-eruptions, already described.

1. KING'S COUNTY

In the progress of the Geological Survey several small tracts of "greenstone ash" and "greenstone" were mapped within an area of a few square miles lying to the north of Philipstown. These igneous rocks were shown to form Croghan Hill, which, rising into a conical eminence 769 feet above the sea, and some 450 feet above the general level of the great limestone plain around it, forms the only conspicuous feature in the landscape for many miles. In the maps and their accompanying Explanations, the "greenstones" are treated as intrusive masses, but the "greenstone ash" or breccia appears to have been regarded as interstratified in the Carboniferous Limestone, though the admission is made that "from the scanty exposures of the rocks and the total absence of any connected section, it has been found impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion as to the relations existing between these traps and ashes with regard to each other or to the surrounding limestone."[70]

[70] See Sheets 109 and 110 of the Geological Survey of Ireland and Explanation to accompany Sheets 98, 99, 108 and 109, by F. J. Foote and J. O'Kelly (1865), pp. 7-18.

In the course of a brief visit to this locality I did not succeed in obtaining any certain proof of the age of the igneous rocks, but I found their structures to be more varied and interesting than would be inferred from the way in which they have been mapped, and I came to the conclusion that the strong balance of probability was in favour of regarding them as of the age of the Carboniferous Limestone.

Fig. 192.—Croghan Hill, King's County, from S.S.W.

The first and most important fact to be announced regarding the district is that it includes a group of volcanic necks which rise through the Carboniferous Limestones. The chief of these forms Croghan Hill. It is nearly circular in ground-plan, and measures about 4000 feet in diameter from the limestone on one side to that on the other. It rises with steep grassy slopes out of the plain, the naked rock projecting here and there in crags and low cliffs. Its general outward resemblance to the Carboniferous necks of Scotland strikes the eye of the geologist as he approaches it ([Fig. 192]).

But Croghan Hill, though the chief, is not the only vent of the district. It forms the centre round which a group of subsidiary vents has been opened. These form smaller and lower eminences, the most distant being one and a half miles E.S.E. from the summit of Croghan Hill, and measuring approximately 1200 feet in its longest and 800 feet in its shortest diameter.

That the igneous materials of these necks really break through the limestones may be clearly seen in several sections. Thus by the roadside at Gorteen, on the south-western side of Croghan Hill, the limestones have been thrown into a highly inclined position, dipping towards the east at 60° or more, and their truncated ends abut against the side of the neck. Again, on the eastern side of the same hill the limestones have been much disturbed close to the margin of the neck, sometimes dipping towards the volcanic centre, and sometimes striking at it. Among these strata a small neck of breccia, of which only a few square yards are visible, rises close to the edge of the bog that covers the adjacent part of the great plain.

The material which chiefly forms these necks is one of the most remarkable breccias anywhere to be found in the volcanic records of the British Isles. The first feature noticeable in it is the pumiceous character of its component fragments. These consist of a pale bluish-grey basic pumice, and are generally about the size of a hazel-nut, but descend to mere microscopic dust, while sometimes exceeding a foot in length. They are angular, subangular and rounded. Occasionally they stand out as hollow shells on weathered surfaces, and in one instance I noted that the vesicles were flattened and drawn out parallel to the surfaces of the shell, as if deformed by gyration, like a true bomb.

The breccia remains singularly uniform in character throughout all the necks. Its basic pumice presents much resemblance to that so characteristic of the Carboniferous necks of Scotland, Derbyshire and the Isle of Man. The abundant vesicles are generally spherical, and as they have been filled with calcite or chlorite, they look like small seeds scattered through a grey paste. Though I broke hundreds of the lapilli, I did not notice among them any volcanic rock other than this pumice. I am not aware of any other neck so homogeneously filled up with one type of pyroclastic material, and certainly there is no other example known in the British Isles of so large and uniform a mass of fragmentary pumice.

Limestone fragments are not uncommon in this breccia. They resemble the strata around the vents. Pieces of the adjacent cherts may also be observed. In one or two cases, the limestone fragments were found by me to have an exceptionally crystalline texture, which may possibly indicate a certain degree of marmarosis, but on the whole there is little trace of alteration.

The fragments of pumice in the breccia are bound together by a cement of calcite. In fact the rock is, so to speak, saturated with calcareous material, which, besides filling up the interstices between the lapilli, has permeated the pumice and filled up such of its vesicles as are not occupied by some chloritic infiltration.

I did not observe unmistakable evidence that any part of the breccia is stratified and intercalated among the limestones, nor any vestige of ashy material in these limestones. But it is possible that traces of such interstratification may occur in the low ground to the north-west of Croghan Hill, which I did not examine.

In only two places did I notice even a semblance of the intercalation of limestone in the breccia. One of these is at Gorteen, where a band of limestone strata a few feet thick is underlain and overlain by breccia. But though the superposition of the layers of finely stratified dark limestone and chert on the breccia is well seen and thoroughly defined, no lapilli or ashy material are to be seen in the limestone. Detached pieces of similar limestone and chert occur in the breccia. The band of stratified rock, if in situ, may be a tongue projecting from the wall into the body of the neck, like some instances already cited from Scotland, but more probably it is really a large included mass lying within the vent itself. The breccia here as elsewhere is entirely without any trace of stratification. The second locality occurs at the most easterly neck north of Coole House, where the limestones, rapidly undulating, seem at last to plunge below the breccia, which shows a series of parallel divisional planes suggestive of bedding. But these may be only joint-structures, for there is no stratification of the component materials of the rock.

In the necks, and also through the limestone surrounding them, masses of eruptive rock have been intruded as irregular bosses and veins. The material of these intrusions presents little variety, and, so far as I could note, gives no indication of the successive protrusion of progressively different lava. It varies from a deep blue-black fine-grained basalt to a dolerite where the plagioclase is distinct. Some portions, however, are more basic and pass into limburgite. Externally there is nothing worthy of special remark in these rocks unless it be their prevalent amygdaloidal structure. The amygdales, generally of calcite, vary from small pea-like forms in the basalts up to kernels half an inch long or more in the dolerites. From a microscopic examination Mr. Watts found that some of the basalts have a base of felspar and augite rich in brown mica, and that their porphyritic felspars enclose idiomorphic crystals of augite.

Perhaps the most noticeable feature in these later parts of the volcanic series is the occurrence in them at one locality in Croghan Demesne of lumps of a highly crystalline material quite distinct from the surrounding rock. These enclosures vary from an inch or two to a foot or more in diameter. They must be regarded as blocks which have been carried up in the ascent of the basic lava. Their composition has been ascertained by Mr. Watts from microscopic examination to be somewhat singular. One specimen "contains relics of garnets, surrounded by rings of kelyphite, imbedded in a mosaic of felspar, with a mineral which may possibly be idocrase." Another specimen from the same locality (south-east from Gorteen) "contains the relics of garnets preserved as kelyphite, set in a matrix of quartz-grains, much strained, and containing a profusion of crystals of greenish-yellow or red sillimanite. This appears to be a metamorphic rock, and may be a fragment of some sediment enclosed in the igneous rocks."[71]

[71] Guide to the Collections of Rocks and Fossils belonging to the Geological Survey, in the Museum of Science and Art, Dublin (1895), pp. 38, 39.

As regards the history of volcanic action in Britain one of the chief points of interest connected with these Irish breccias and lavas relates to their geological age. As no proof has been produced that any portion of them is contemporaneously interstratified in the Carboniferous Limestone which surrounds them, we cannot definitely affirm that the volcanic eruptions which they record took place during the accumulation of that formation. The vents must, of course, be later than that portion of the limestone which they pierce. But the evidence seems to me to be on the whole most favourable to the view that they are of Carboniferous Limestone age, for the following reasons:—

1. The breccias of Croghan Hill do not present a resemblance to any of those belonging to the Tertiary volcanic series in Antrim or the Inner Hebrides. The possibility of their being of Tertiary age may therefore be dismissed from consideration.

2. There are no known Permian volcanic rocks in Ireland. Nor does the Croghan Hill breccia show any resemblance to the ordinary material of the breccias in the Permian necks of Scotland. It is thus not likely to be of Permian age.

3. The peculiar basic pumice of these Croghan Hill vents has many points in common with the palagonite fragments so abundant among the volcanic breccias and tuffs of Carboniferous age in Scotland, Derbyshire, and the Isle of Man, and which occurs also among the Carboniferous tuffs of the Limerick basin. It differs from the general type of the material in its pale colour, in its uniformity of character, in its calcareous cement, and above all in its vast preponderance over all the other materials in the breccia.

4. The saturation of the Croghan Hill breccia with calcite is a singular feature in the composition of the rock. Had the vents been opened long subsequent to the deposition of the Carboniferous Limestone, it is difficult to understand how this calcite could have been introduced. Mere percolation of meteoric water from the adjacent limestone does not seem adequate to account for the scale and thoroughness of the permeation. But if the vents were opened on the floor of the Carboniferous Limestone sea, it is intelligible that much fine calcareous silt should have found its way down among the interstices of the breccia and into the pores of the pumice which, being caked together within the vent, did not all float away when the sea gained access to the volcanic funnel. The effect of subsequent percolation would doubtless be to carry the lime into still unfilled crevices, and to impart to the cement a crystalline structure similar to that which has been developed in the ordinary limestones.

2. THE LIMERICK BASIN

About 70 miles to the south-west of the area just described lies the most compact, and, for its size, one of the most varied and complete, of all the Carboniferous volcanic districts of Britain (Map I.). It takes the form of an oval basin in the Carboniferous Limestone series near the town of Limerick, about twelve miles long from east to west and six miles broad from north to south. Round this basin the volcanic rocks extend as a rim about a mile broad. A portion of a second or inner rim, marking a second and higher volcanic group, partially encloses a patch of Millstone Grit or Coal-measures, which lies in the heart of the limestone basin. (See the section in [Fig. 196].)

But it is evident that, as the denuded edges of the volcanic sheets emerge at the surface all round the basin, the present area over which these rocks extend must be considerably less than that which they originally covered. Some indication of their greater extension is supplied by outliers of the bedded lavas and tuffs, as well as by bosses which doubtless indicate the position of some of the eruptive vents. The distance between the furthest remaining patches is 24 miles. The original tract over which the volcanic materials were spread cannot have been less than 24 miles long by 10 miles broad. If we assume its area to have been between 250 and 300 square miles we shall probably be under the truth.

This volcanic centre made its appearance on the floor of the Carboniferous Sea in the same district which had witnessed the eruptions of Upper Old Red Sandstone time. The two visible vents that crown the Knockfeerina and Ballinleeny anticlines (Chapter xxii.), are only some ten miles distant, and there may be others of the same age even under the Limerick basin. This district thus supplies another instance of that recurrence of volcanic energy in the same area, after a longer or shorter geological interval, which stands out as a conspicuous feature in the history of volcanic action in Britain. That a prolonged interval elapsed between the extinction of the Old Red Sandstone volcanoes and the outbreak of their successors during the accumulation of the Carboniferous limestone series, may be inferred from the thickness of strata which separate their respective tuffs. From the published sections of the Geological Survey there would appear to be about 500 feet of Old Red Sandstone above the volcanic series of that formation. Then comes the Lower Limestone shale, which is computed to be about the same thickness. From the scarcity of observable dip among the Lower Limestones and their variable inclination, it is not easy to form any satisfactory estimate of the depth of this group up to the base of the volcanic series. It may be as much as 800 feet,[72] and if so there would thus intervene a mass of sedimentary material nearly 2000 feet in thickness between the two volcanic platforms. Throughout this thick accumulation of stratified deposits no trace of contemporaneous volcanic activity has been detected. From the descriptions published more than thirty years ago by Jukes and his colleagues in the Geological Survey of Ireland, geologists learnt how full and interesting are the proofs of great volcanic activity contemporaneous with the deposition of the Carboniferous Limestone series in the Limerick district.[73] Nowhere, indeed, is the evidence more complete for the occurrence of a long succession of volcanic eruptions during a definite period of geological time. The officers of the Survey showed that two epochs of activity during the older part of the Carboniferous period were each marked by a group of tuffs and lavas, while the interval of quiescence between them is represented by a thousand feet of limestone. The same observers likewise mapped outside the volcanic ring a number of eruptive bosses, which they regarded as probably marking some of the actual vents of that time.

[72] This is the thickness given in the Explanation to Sheet 144 of the Geological Survey of Ireland, p. 8. A still greater thickness is claimed in Explanation to Sheet 154, p. 8.

[73] See especially Explanations of Sheets 143, 144, 153 and 154, Geol. Surv. Ireland (1860, 1861). The geology of the district had been previously noticed by earlier observers, to whose writings reference is made on p. 26 of the Explanation of Sheet 144. See also Jas. Apjohn, Journ. Geol. Soc. Dublin, vol. i. (1832), p. 24; Prof. Hull, Geol. Mag. for 1874, p. 205. Jukes (Student's Manual of Geology, 2nd edit. 1862, p. 325) gave subsequently an excellent epitome of the volcanic history. The microscopic structure of some of the Limerick volcanic rocks has been described by Mr. Allport, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxx. (1874), p. 552, and by Prof. Hull, Geol. Mag. for 1873, p. 153. See also Mr. Watts' account of these rocks in the Guide to the Collections of Rocks and Fossils (Dublin, 1895), p. 93.

The lower volcanic group, which forms a complete ring round the Upper Limestones of the Limerick basin, is estimated to reach a thickness of 1000 feet in some parts of its course.[74] Its base appears to coincide generally with the upward termination of the Lower Limestone group of this district, though here and there small patches of volcanic rocks in that group have been regarded as interstratified and contemporaneous bands.[75] It consists of a series of lavas and tuffs, the alternations and rapid incoming and dying out of which were well made out by the Geological Survey.

[74] Explanation of Sheet 144, p. 27.

[75] Some of them, however, have characters that rather seem to place them with the intrusive materials of the district, and therefore not necessarily earlier than the bedded lavas and tuffs. The boundary line of the volcanic series is not consistently followed along the same horizon on the Survey maps. Thus to the east of Caherconlish, a strip of the Upper Limestone is inserted below the base of the tuffs for a distance of about four miles. Unless a different horizon has been in some places taken for the boundary between the two groups of limestones, it would appear that the eruptions had not extended over the north and north-east of the district until some time after the deposition of the Upper Limestone had begun. The division between the two limestone groups is taken at a set of chert-bands, but as these are not constant it is sometimes difficult to draw a satisfactory line of division.

Tuffs.—The base of the volcanic series is generally formed by a band of tuff sometimes as much as 350 feet thick,[76] which may be traced nearly continuously round the basin as well as in detached outliers even as far as Carrigogunnel overlooking the alluvial plain of the Shannon. The manner in which the bottom of this tuff is interstratified with the limestone below it may be instructively examined in many quarries around the town of Limerick. Striking evidence is there supplied that the first eruptions were comparatively feeble and spasmodic, and were separated by intervals of longer and shorter duration, during which the limestone with its fragmentary organisms was deposited, little or no volcanic detritus falling at that time. Yet even in some of the limestones the microscope reveals fine broken needles of felspar, representing doubtless the finest ejected dust.[77]

[76] Explanation of Sheet 154, p. 21.

[77] For the details of the microscopic structure of the Limerick volcanic rocks I am mainly indebted to the examination of them made for me by my Survey colleague, Mr. W. W. Watts.

As an illustration of the way in which the volcanic and organic detritus alternated over the sea-floor, the following section from a quarry in the townland of Loch Gur on the southern side of the basin is here given:[78]—

[78] Explanation of Sheet 154, pp. 21, 22.

The tuffs which in the southern part of the basin underlie the less basic lavas differ in some respects from those which further north are associated with the Upper Limestones. They are green, sometimes dull purplish-red, finely granular rocks, made up in large part of andesitic debris. They are full of loose felspar crystals, minute, somewhat rounded and subangular lapilli of andesite or some less basic lava, together with bits of grit and baked shale. Though generally much decomposed, they are sometimes compact enough to be used for building-stone. Under the microscope these tuffs are seen to abound in andesite-lapilli, with a few pieces of felsitic rocks enclosed in an opaque base, through which are scattered broken felspars and occasional vesicular lapilli.

Fig. 193.—Section in quarry on roadside east of Limerick close to viaduct of the Limerick and Erris Railway.
1. Limestone; 2. Calcareous tuff; 3. Ashy limestone or calcareous tuff.

The tuffs around Limerick, interbedded with the Black (Upper) Limestone, are distinguished by a scarcity of andesitic debris, by their persistent dull greenish-grey colour, and more particularly by the abundance of minute lapilli and larger fragments of an epidote-green, finely vesicular, easily sectile basic pumice. Under the microscope much of this material is found to be an altered basic glass of the nature of palagonite. These tuffs are in evident relation with the more basic lavas that accompany them. The manner in which they alternate with the black limestone shows that the conditions for the eruption of this more basic detritus continued to be very similar to those that existed when the andesitic tuffs were ejected. As a good illustration of this feature the accompanying section ([Fig. 193]) is given from a quarry on the side of the high-road between Limerick and Annacotty. The total depth of strata here represented is about 15 feet. The black limestone at the bottom is a tolerably pure calcareous rock. It is divided into bands by thin partings of a fine greenish calcareous tuff, each marking a brief discharge of ashes from some neighbouring vent. Half-way up the succession of strata, the ashy material rapidly increases until it usurps the place of the limestone, though its calcareous composition shows that the accumulation of calcareous sediment had not been entirely suspended during the eruption of ash.

Among these tuffs I have noticed fragments of fine, dark, flinty felsite, grit and other rocks. The stones are for the most part small, but vary up to blocks occasionally a foot in diameter.

Lavas.—The lavas occur in numerous sheets, sometimes separated by thin partings or thicker beds of tuff and volcanic conglomerate. On the northern rim of the basin Mr. G. H. Kinahan has described the volcanic series east of Shehan's Cross-roads as composed of six zones of tuff, each bed varying from about 50 to 250 feet in thickness, alternating with as many sheets of lava ranging from 27 to 180 feet in thickness, the total depth of tuff being estimated at nearly 500 feet and that of the lavas at about 800 feet.[79] Some of these tuffs are coarse conglomerates or agglomerates, with blocks of lava occasionally 10 feet long.

[79] Explanation of Sheet 144, p. 28.

Some of the lavas in the lower volcanic group are andesites quite like those of the plateau series in the Carboniferous system of Scotland. Externally they appear as dull reddish-brown or purplish-red compact rocks, with abundant porphyritic felspars scattered through the fine-grained base. They are generally much decomposed, showing on a fresh fracture pseudomorphs of chlorite, hæmatite and calcite after some of the minerals, with abundant hæmatitic staining through the body of the rock. Amygdaloidal structure is commonly developed.

These andesites, when examined microscopically, were found by Mr. Watts to present the characteristic base of minute felspar-laths with magnetite and enstatite, and with porphyritic crystals, often large, of zoned plagioclase, as well as of ilmenite and hæmatite.

Fig. 194.—Section of the volcanic escarpment, east of Shehan's Cross-roads, south of Limerick.
1. Limestone; 2 2. Tuffs; 3 3. Lavas.

But besides the andesites there occur also, and, so far as I have observed, in larger number, sheets of true basalt. This rock is typically black, exceedingly close-grained in the central portion of each sheet, but becoming highly slaggy and vesicular along the upper and lower parts. Under the microscope it is found to contain granular augite and magnetite, set in a more or less devitrified glass, with microlites of felspar, porphyritic plagioclase, serpentinized olivine, and some well-marked augite. These rocks form distinct escarpments along the northern rim of the basin as in the foregoing section east from Shehan's Cross-roads ([Fig. 194]). From the summit of this ridge, which is about 600 feet above the sea, the eye looks northward over the plain, across which low outliers of the volcanic series are scattered, and southwards across the basin to the corresponding line of volcanic heights forming the southern rim.

The upper volcanic group has been estimated by the officers of the Geological Survey to lie about 1000 feet higher in the Carboniferous system than the lower, the intervening strata consisting of the Upper Limestone.[80] It is possible that the interval is greater in some parts of the district than in others, and if so, the difference may be due either to greater local accumulation of volcanic materials, or to local prolongation of the eruptions into higher stratigraphical horizons. The outcrop of the upper volcanic band forms about half of a ring round the little cup of Millstone Grit or Coal-measures which lies within the volcanic basin. On the north-west side of the cup the volcanic rocks disappear. Hence the upper band has a much more restricted area than the lower. But if the tuffs immediately around Limerick are assigned to the upper group, its extent will be proportionately increased. There can be little doubt, however, that neither in thickness nor in superficial area did the lavas and tuffs of the second group equal those of the first. The volcanic energy was gradually dying out.

[80] Explanation of Sheet 154, p. 24.

The lavas of the second period are characteristic dull, black, compact basalts, like those of the first period, becoming here and there strongly amygdaloidal, and being occasionally separated by slaggy or conglomeratic partings. But they include also certain rocks wherein the felspar diminishes in quantity, while augite and olivine become conspicuous, together with a little enstatite. The augite occurs in large porphyritic forms, as well as of medium size and in small prisms. The olivine, as usual, is now in the condition of serpentine. These rocks are more basic than the ordinary basalts, containing only 38·66 per cent of silica, and thus approaching the limburgites. With these basic lavas are associated dull green tuffs and conglomerates, made up largely of basalt-debris, together with abundant pieces of finely vesicular basic pumice and lapilli of a palagonitic material.

The manner in which the lavas and tuffs have alternated with each other, and also with the limestones, is well seen on Nicker Hill above Pallas Grean.[81] The Survey sections show eight sheets of lava, separated by six bands of tuff and eight intercalations of limestone, the whole passing under the Coal-measures.

[81] See Explanation of Sheet 144, p. 30, where a description with detailed map and sections of this ground will be found.

The upper volcanic group may be as much as 600 or 800 feet thick. It appears to have been left, at the close of the eruptions, with a very uneven surface, some portions being so low as to be overspread with the Upper Limestones, other parts so high as not to be covered until the Coal-measure shales and flagstones came to be deposited.[82]

[82] Explanation of Sheet 154, pp. 24, 35.

Vents.—All round the edges of the Limerick basin, where the escarpments of the volcanic groups, rising abruptly above the plain, show that these rocks once extended beyond their present limits, the progress of denudation has revealed a number of bosses which, as above stated, Jukes and his associates looked upon as marking some of the vents from which the lavas and tuffs were erupted. Especially striking is the line of these vents along the southern margin. The rocks now filling them present some unusual and rather anomalous features. They are decidedly more acid than the lavas of the basin, some of them even containing free quartz. Mr. Watts remarks that "though they have a good deal in common with the trachytes, they are crystalline throughout. They are red granite-looking rocks, which are made up chiefly of stumpy idiomorphic prisms of felspar which is mainly orthoclase. Some plagioclase also occurs, and the two felspars are imbedded in interstitial quartz. A trace of hornblende or mica is frequently present, and the rocks contain about 65 per cent of silica." These characters are specially observable in the necks furthest removed from the basin, which may possibly have been connected with the andesitic outflows. Nearer to the basin the necks "contain about 60 per cent of silica, seldom show any interstitial quartz, and stand between trachytes and porphyrites, some perhaps being bostonites."[83]

[83] Guide to the Collections of Rocks, etc., Geol. Survey, Ireland, p. 93, Dublin 1895.

Fig. 195.—View of Derk Hill, a volcanic neck on the south side of the Limerick basin.

A geologist, familiar with the Carboniferous and Permian necks of Scotland, has no hesitation in confirming the surmise of Jukes and his colleagues that the cones and domes around the Limerick basin mark the sites of eruptive vents. On the south side of the basin, at least nine such necks rise into view, partly from among the lavas and tuffs, but chiefly through the limestones that emerge from below these volcanic sheets. One of the most conspicuous of them, Derk Hill ([Fig. 195]), rises to a height of 781 feet above the sea, and comes through the bedded andesites, as represented in [Fig. 196], which gives, in diagrammatic form, the general structure of the Limerick volcanic basin. Around the northern side of the basin a smaller number of necks has been observed, consisting of similar acid rocks.

Fig. 196.—Section across the Limerick volcanic basin.
1. Lower limestone; 2. Lower series of lavas and tuffs; 3. Middle and Upper Limestone; 4. Upper series of lavas and tuffs; 5 5. Two volcanic necks; 6. Millstone Grit series.

A few of the necks appear to be filled with volcanic agglomerate. Here and there detached patches of fragmental volcanic material have been shown on the Survey maps, and referred to in the Explanations, as if they were outliers of the bedded tuffs; though in some cases the coarseness of their materials and the want of any distinct bedding, together with the absence of any indication of their relation to the nearest limestones, have evidently offered considerable difficulty in their mapping. One of the best examples occurs about two miles to the south-east of the village of Oola. The boundaries of this patch, as put on the map, are confessed to be "entirely speculative." It was only seen on the side of the railway where it appeared as "a very coarse brecciated purple ash."[84]

[84] Explanation of Sheet 154, p. 25.

On comparing the maps of the Limerick basin with those of the Carboniferous districts of Scotland, the main difference will probably be acknowledged to be the absence of any recognizable sills in the Irish ground. That no sills actually occur, I am not prepared to affirm. Indeed some of the more acid rocks, both outside the basin and among the rocks of the older volcanic group, appeared to me during my traverses of the ground to have much of the character of sills. A more critical examination of the area would not improbably detect some truly intrusive sheets which have hitherto been mapped among the interstratified lavas. Some appear to exist among the surrounding Lower Limestones.