Abstract
III.
THE direct formation of the crystalline schists from an aqueous magma is a notion which belongs to an early period in geological theory. De la Beche, in 1834,+ conceived that they were thrown down as chemical deposits from the waters of the heated ocean, after its reaction on the crust of the cooling globe, and before the appearance of organic life. This view was revived by Daubree in i860. Having sought to explain the alteration of palaeozoic strata of mechanical origin, by the action of heated waters, he proceeds to discuss the origin of the still more ancient crystalline schists. The first precipitated waters, according to him, acting on the anhydrous silicates of the earth's crust, at a very elevated temperature, and at a great pressure, which he estimated at two hundred and fifty atmospheres, formed a magma, from which, as it cooled, were successively deposited the various strata of the crystalline schists. J This hypothesis, violating, as it does, all the notions which sound theory teaches |with regard to the chemistry of a cooling globe, I has, moreover, to encounter grave geognostical difficulties. The pre-Silurian crystalline rocks belong to two or more distinct systems of different ages, succeeding each other in discordant stratification. The whole history of these rocks, moreover, shows that their various alternating strata were deposited, not as precipitates from a seething solution, but under conditions of sedimentation very like those of more recent times. In the oldest known of them, the Laurentian system, great limestone formations are inters [ratified with gneisses, quartzites, and even with conglomerates. All analogy, moreover, leads us to conclude that even at this early period life existed at the surface of the planet. Great accumulations of iron-oxyd, beds of metallic sulphids, and of graphite, exist in these oldest strata, and we know of no other agency than that of organic matter capable of generating these products.
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The Geognosy of the Appalachians and the Origin of Crystalline Rocks * . Nature 5, 50–52 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/005050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005050a0