Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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These Obsidians Are,
Nevertheless, But Little Transparent On The Edges; They Are Almost
Opaque, Of A Brownish Black, And Of An Imperfect Conchoidal
Fracture.
They pass into pitch-stone; and we may consider them as
porphyries with a basis of obsidian.
The second variety is found in
fragments much less considerable. It is in general of a greenish
black, sometimes of murky grey, very seldom of a perfect black,
like the obsidian of Hecla and Mexico. Its fracture is perfectly
conchoidal, and it is extremely transparent on the edges. I have
found in it neither amphibole nor pyroxene, but some small white
points, which seem to be feldspar. None of the obsidians of the
Peak appear in those grey masses of pearl or lavender-blue,
striped, and in separate wedge-formed pieces, like the obsidian of
Quito, Mexico, and Lipari, and which resemble the fibrous plates of
the crystalites of our glass-houses, on which Sir James Hall, Dr.
Thompson, and M. de Bellevue, have published some curious
observations.* (* The name crystalites has been given to the
crystalized thin plates observed in glass cooling slowly. The term
glastenized glass is employed by Dr. Thompson and others to
indicate glass which by slow cooling is wholly unvitrified, and has
assumed the appearance of a fossil substance, or real glass-stone.)
The third variety of obsidian of the Peak is the most remarkable of
the whole, from its connexion with pumice-stone. It is, like that
above described, of a greenish black, sometimes of a murky grey,
but its very thin plates alternate with layers of pumice-stone. Dr.
Thomson's fine collection at Naples contained similar examples of
lithoid lava of Vesuvius, divided into very distinct plates, only a
line thick. The fibres of the pumice-stone of the Peak are very
seldom parallel to each other, and perpendicular to the strata of
obsidian; they are most commonly irregular, asbestoidal, like
fibrous glass-gall; and instead of being disseminated in the
obsidian, like crystalites, they are found simply adhering to one
of the external surfaces of this substance. During my stay at
Madrid, M. Hergen showed me several specimens in the mineralogical
collection of Don Jose Clavijo; and for a long time the Spanish
mineralogists considered them as furnishing undoubted proofs, that
pumice-stone owes its origin to obsidian, in some degree deprived
of colour, and swelled by volcanic fire. I was formerly of this
opinion, which, however, must be understood to refer to one variety
only of pumice. I even thought, with many other geologists, that
obsidian, so far from being vitrified lava, belonged to rocks that
were not volcanic; and that the fire, forcing its way through the
basalts, the green-stone rocks, the phonolites, and the porphyries
with bases of pitchstone and obsidian, the lavas and pumice-stone
were no other than these same rocks altered by the action of the
volcanoes. The deprivation of colour and extraordinary swelling
which the greater part of the obsidians undergo in a forge-fire,
their transition into pitch-stone, and their position in regions
very distant from burning volcanoes, appear to be phenomena very
difficult to reconcile, when we consider the obsidians as volcanic
glass. A more profound study of nature, new journeys, and
observations made on the productions of burning volcanoes, have led
me to renounce those ideas.
It appears to me at present extremely probable, that obsidians, and
porphyries with bases of obsidian, are vitrified masses, the
cooling of which has been too rapid to change them into lithoid
lava. I consider even the pearlstone as an unvitrified obsidian:
for among the minerals in the King's cabinet at Berlin there are
volcanic glasses from Lipari, in which we see striated crystalites,
of a pearl-grey colour, and of an earthy appearance, forming
gradual approaches to a granular lithoid lava, like the pearlstone
of Cinapecuaro, in Mexico. The oblong bubbles observed in the
obsidians of every continent are incontestible proofs of their
ancient state of igneous fluidity; and Dr. Thompson possesses
specimens from Lipari, which are very instructive in this point of
view, because fragments of red porphyry, or porphyry lavas, which
do not entirely fill up the cavities of the obsidian, are found
enveloped in them. We might say, that these fragments had not time
to enter into complete solution in the liquified mass. They contain
vitreous feldspar, and augite, and are the same as the celebrated
columnar porphyries of the island of Panaria, which, without having
been part of a current of lava, seem raised up in the form of
hillocks, like many of the porphyries in Auvergne, in the Euganean
mountains, and in the Cordilleras of the Andes.
The objections against the volcanic origin of obsidians, founded on
their speedy loss of colour, and their swelling by a slow fire,
have been shaken by the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall.
These experiments prove, that a stone which is fusible only at
thirty-eight degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, yields a glass that
softens at fourteen degrees; and that this glass, melted again and
unvitrified (glastenized), is fusible again only at thirty-five
degrees of the same pyrometer. I applied the blowpipe to some black
pumice-stone from the volcano of the isle of Bourbon, which, on the
slightest contact with the flame, whitened and melted into an
enamel.
But whether obsidians be primitive rocks which have undergone the
action of volcanic fire, or lavas repeatedly melted within the
crater, the origin of the pumice-stones contained in the obsidian
of the Peak of Teneriffe is not less problematic. This subject is
the more worthy of being investigated, since it is generally
interesting to the geology of volcanoes; and since that excellent
mineralogist, M. Fleuriau de Bellevue, after having examined Italy
and the adjacent islands with great attention, affirms, that it is
highly improbable that pumice-stone owes its origin to the swelling
of obsidian.
The experiments of M. da Camara, and those I made in 1802, tend to
support the opinion, that the pumice-stones adherent to the
obsidians of the Peak of Teneriffe do not unite to them
accidentally, but are produced by the expansion of an elastic
fluid, which is disengaged from the compact vitreous matter.
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