On the Origin of the Gypseous and Saliferous Marls of the New Red Sandstone
Year: 1845
Type: article
Abstract: For years past I have had great difficulty in accounting for the marls of the new red sandstone, and as none of the explanations yet given appear to me sufficient, or satisfactorily account for the * absence of molluscous and zoophytous remains in these beds, and still less for that of the numerous plants entombed above and below them, I propose in the following observations to attempt to explain these phenomena, in the hope, to use the words of Sir H. Delabeche, of arriving at the “knowledge of the true causes which have produced” the remarkable aggregates in question. In examining the district of Bleadon with a view to account for the phenomena of trap rocks presented in the railway cutting, I observed in the superficial coating of soil on the northern flank of the hill above Weston-super-Mare, such abundant fragments of vesicular trap, some of them having the aspect of recent volcanic scoriæ, others containing spherical kernels of decomposing calcareous spar and hæmatitic iron, that I entertained no doubt whatever that I was standing on a dyke of ancient lava. The occurrence of these fragments for about seventy-five yards, in an east and west direction, indicated its strike, and rendered it probable that the same appearance would recur in the neighbouring coast cliffs. Those brown, strange-looking rocks, therefore, with whose aspect I had been long familiar, were volcanic aggregates, and were, in fact, two of the most interesting and instructive of the large number which had fallen under my notice.
Author: D. Williams
Language: English
Subfield: Earth-Surface Processes
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1989693486