Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/676

658 differs from any Palæozoic sandstone or quartzite that I have yet seen. Among grains of quartz and feldspar are scattered numerous flakes of mica, brown or white. The form of these is so regular that I conclude they have been developed, or at least completed, in situ. Moreover, the quartz and the feldspar no longer retain the distinctly fragmental character usual in a Palæozoic grit, but appear to have received secondary enlargement. A rock of fragmental origin to some extent has simulated or reverted to a truly crystalline structure. In regard to the larger fragments we can affirm that they were once granitoid rock, but in them also we note incipient changes, such as the development of quartz and mica from feldspar (without any indication of pressure), and there is reason to think that these changes were anterior to the formation of the pebbles. To sum up the evidence: In the oldest gneissoid rocks we find structures different from those of granite, but bearing some resemblance to, though on a larger scale than, the structures of vein-granites or the surfaces of larger masses when intrusive in sedimentary deposits. We find that pressure alone does not produce structures like these in crystalline rocks, and that when it gives rise to mineral banding this is only on a comparatively minute scale. We find that pressures acting upon ordinary sediments in Palæozoic or later times do not produce more than colorable imitations of crystalline schists. We find that when they act upon the latter the result differs, and is generally distinguishable from stratification-foliation. We see that elevation of temperature obviously facilitates changes and promotes coarseness of structure. We see also that the rocks in a crystalline series which appear to occupy the highest position seem to be the least metamorphosed, and present the strongest resemblance to stratified rocks. Lastly, we see that mineral change appears to have taken place more readily in the later Archæan times than it ever did afterward. It seems, then, a legitimate induction that in Archæan times conditions favorable to mineral change and molecular movement—in short, to metamorphism—were general, which in later ages have become rare and local, so that, as a rule, these gneisses and schists represent the foundation-stones of the earth's crust. On the other side, what evidence can be offered? In the first place, any number of vague or rash assertions. So many of these have already come to an untimely end, and I have spent so much time and money in attending their executions, that I do not mean to trouble about another till its advocates express themselves willing to let the question stand or fall on that issue. To a geologist (especially one belonging to the school of Lyell) it is equally difficult to conceive that there should be a broad distinction between the metamorphic rocks of Archæan and post-Archæan age respectively, as that the pre-Tertiary