ORIGIN OF CLAYS
Something has been said on this matter in the foregoing paragraphs. It is now recognised that a pure china-clay or a pipe-clay, that is, a pure kaolin-earth, does not arise from the sifting of the products of surface-denudation. The alkali felspars decompose as they lie in exposed layers of granite and gneiss, but the kaolin thus formed under the acid action of atmospheric waters is relatively small in quantity, and cannot escape from its coarser associates, such as undecomposed felspar and quartz, until it is carried away far from land. Even then, as the records of H.M.S. "Challenger" show[44], marine muds may contain more than fifty per cent. of detrital quartz-grains, and quartz is always the most abundant mineral among the larger particles of the mud.
Where, however, decomposition of the granitoid rock has been exceptionally thorough, kaolin may be present in sufficient quantity to predominate over other materials. The product washed from the surface then gathers as a white clay even in lakes, and further artificial washing may extract from it an actual kaolin-earth or china-clay. In such cases, the rock has become rotted throughout in consequence of subterranean action. Hydrofluoric acid as well as other gases have been at work, as is shown by the secondary minerals associated with the kaolin; and the appearance of white powdery kaolin in unusual abundance on the surface is due to the local exposure of a mass that was long ago made ready in the depths.
The sifting action, however, of running waters, and especially of the sea upon a shore, ultimately causes clayey matter to be carried away into regions where it is slowly deposited. The flocculating action of the salts dissolved in sea-water greatly assists the precipitation of clay before it has reached some two hundred miles from land. However, just as sandstone begets sandstone, clays or shales exposed upon a coast produce new clays close to shore. The estuary of the Thames and many "slob-lands" serve as examples. Off Brazil, red clays arise[45] from the large quantity of "ochreous matter" carried from the coast. Modern green marine muds are found to contain glauconite, a silicate common in the English Gault clays, and formed by interactions in the sea itself. Modern blue muds[46] are recorded down to 2800 fathoms, and contain organic matter and iron disulphide.
Much has been written by the observers on the "Challenger" and by others on the red clay of truly abyssal depths, which is attributed to the decay of wind-borne volcanic dust, and of igneous matter erupted on the sea-floor, rather than to any direct transport by water from the land.
Clays may also accumulate on a land-surface from fine volcanic ash, which decomposes through the action of percolating waters.