these bodies (plants as they are now generally considered to be) exhibit under a microscope of ordinary power, no traces of organisation in their internal structure.Mr.George R.Sowerby has been so good as to examine the shells which I collected: there are fourteen species in a sufficiently perfect condition for their characters to be made out with some degree of certainty, and four which can be referred only to their genera.Of the fourteen shells, of which a list is given in the Appendix, eleven are recent species; one, though undescribed, is perhaps identical with a species which I found living in the harbour of Porto Praya; the two remaining species are unknown, and have been described by Mr.Sowerby.
Until the shells of this Archipelago and of the neighbouring coasts are better known, it would be rash to assert that even these two latter shells are extinct.The number of species which certainly belong to existing kinds, although few in number, are sufficient to show that the deposit belongs to a late tertiary period.From its mineralogical character, from the number and size of the embedded fragments, and from the abundance of Patellae, and other littoral shells, it is evident that the whole was accumulated in a shallow sea, near an ancient coast-line.
EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE FLOWING OF THE SUPERINCUMBENT BASALTIC LAVA OVERTHE CALCAREOUS DEPOSIT.
These effects are very curious.The calcareous matter is altered to the depth of about a foot beneath the line of junction; and a most perfect gradation can be traced, from loosely aggregated, small, particles of shells, corallines, and Nulliporae, into a rock, in which not a trace of mechanical origin can be discovered, even with a microscope.Where the metamorphic change has been greatest, two varieties occur.The first is a hard, compact, white, fine-grained rock, striped with a few parallel lines of black volcanic particles, and resembling a sandstone, but which, upon close examination, is seen to be crystallised throughout, with the cleavages so perfect that they can be readily measured by the reflecting goniometer.In specimens, where the change has been less complete, when moistened and examined under a strong lens, the most interesting gradation can be traced, some of the rounded particles retaining their proper forms, and others insensibly melting into the granulo-crystalline paste.The weathered surface of this stone, as is so frequently the case with ordinary limestones, assumes a brick-red colour.
The second metamorphosed variety is likewise a hard rock, but without any crystalline structure.It consists of a white, opaque, compact, calcareous stone, thickly mottled with rounded, though regular, spots of a soft, earthy, ochraceous substance.This earthy matter is of a pale yellowish-brown colour, and appears to be a mixture of carbonate of lime with iron;it effervesces with acids, is infusible, but blackens under the blowpipe, and becomes magnetic.The rounded form of the minute patches of earthy substance, and the steps in the progress of their perfect formation, which can be followed in a suit of specimens, clearly show that they are due either to some power of aggregation in the earthy particles amongst themselves, or more probably to a strong attraction between the atoms of the carbonate of line, and consequently to the segregation of the earthy extraneous matter.I was much interested by this fact, because I have often seen quartz rocks (for instance, in the Falkland Islands, and in the lower Silurian strata of the Stiper-stones in Shropshire), mottled in a precisely analogous manner, with little spots of a white, earthy substance (earthy feldspar?); and these rocks, there was good reason to suppose, had undergone the action of heat,--a view which thus receives confirmation.
This spotted structure may possibly afford some indication in distinguishing those formations of quartz, which owe their present structure to igneous action, from those produced by the agency of water alone; a source of doubt, which I should think from my own experience, that most geologists, when examining arenaceo-quartzose districts must have experienced.
The lowest and most scoriaceous part of the lava, in rolling over the sedimentary deposit at the bottom of the sea, has caught up large quantities of calcareous matter, which now forms a snow-white, highly crystalline basis to a breccia, including small pieces of black, glossy scoriae.A little above this, where the lime is less abundant, and the lava more compact, numerous little balls, composed of spicula of calcareous spar, radiating from common centres, occupy the interstices.In one part of Quail Island, the lime has thus been crystallised by the heat of the superincumbent lava, where it is only thirteen feet in thickness; nor had the lava been originally thicker, and since reduced by degradation, as could be told from the degree of cellularity of its surface.I have already observed that the sea must have been shallow in which the calcareous deposit was accumulated.In this case, therefore, the carbonic acid gas has been retained under a pressure, insignificant compared with that (a column of water, 1,708 feet in height) originally supposed by Sir James Hall to be requisite for this end: but since his experiments, it has been discovered that pressure has less to do with the retention of carbonic acid gas, than the nature of the circumjacent atmosphere; and hence, as is stated to be the case by Mr.Faraday, masses of limestone are sometimes fused and crystallised even in common limekilns.(I am much indebted to Mr.E.W.