Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Here,
Then, Is A Connexion Sufficiently Close Established Between The
Phonolites And The Green Slates, Between The Pyroxenic Amygdaloids And
The serpentines containing copper-ores, between volcanic substances
and others that are included under the vague name of transition-traps.
All these masses are destitute of quartz like the real
trap-porphyries, or volcanic trachytes. This phenomenon is the more
remarkable, as the grunsteins which are called primitive almost always
contain quartz in Europe. The most general dip of the slates of
Piedras Azules, of the grunsteins of Parapara, and of the pyroxenic
amygdaloids embedded in strata of grunstein, does not follow the slope
of the ground from north to south, but is pretty regular towards the
north. The strata incline towards the chain of the coast, as
substances which had not been in fusion might be supposed to do. Can
we admit that so many alternating rocks, imbedded one in the other,
have a common origin? The nature of the phonolites, which are lithoid
lavas with a feldspar basis, and the nature of the green slates
intermixed with hornblende, oppose this opinion. In this state of
things we may choose between two solutions of the problem in question.
In one of these solutions the phonolite of the Cerro de Flores is to
be regarded as the sole volcanic production of the tract; and we are
forced to unite the pyroxenic amygdaloids with the rest of the
grunsteins, in one single formation, that which is so common in the
transition-mountains of Europe, considered hitherto as not volcanic.
In the other solution of the problem, the masses of phonolite,
amygdaloid, and grunstein, which are found in the south of the ravine
of Piedras Azules, are separated from the grunsteins and serpentine
rocks that cover the declivity of the mountains north of the ravine.
In the present state of knowledge I find difficulties almost equally
great in adopting either of these suppositions; but I have no doubt
that, when the real grunsteins (not the hornblende-grunsteins)
contained in the gneiss and mica-slates, shall have been more
attentively examined in other places; when the basalts (with pyroxene)
forming strata in primitive rocks* (* For instance, at Krobsdorf, in
Silesia, a stratum of basalt has been recognized in the mica-slate by
two celebrated geologists, MM.
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