The felspar, which enters into the composition of granite, is a mineral that is easily decomposed by water, either cold or boiling, or by the water of springs rich in carbonic acid. The chemical action of carbonic acid and water, and the action (at once chemical and mechanical) of the hot water in the primitive seas, powerfully modified the granitic rocks which lay beneath them. The warm rains which fell upon the mountain-peaks and granitic pinnacles, the torrents of rain which fell upon the slopes or in the valleys, dissolved the several alkaline silicates which constitute felspar and mica, and swept them away to form elsewhere strata of clay and sand; thus were the first modifications in the primitive rocks produced by the united action of air and water, and thus were the first sedimentary rocks deposited from the oceanic waters.
The argillaceous deposits produced by this decomposition of the felspathic and micaceous rocks would participate in the still heated temperature of the globe—would be again subjected to long continued heat; and when they became cool again, they would assume, by a kind of semi-crystallisation, that parallel structure which is called foliation. All foliated rocks, then, are metamorphic, and the result of a metamorphic action to which sedimentary strata (and even some eruptive rocks) have been subjected subsequently to their deposition and consolidation, and which has produced a re-arrangement of their component mineral particles, and frequently, if not always, of their chemical elements also.
In this manner would the first beds of crystalline schist, such as mica-schist, be formed, probably out of sandy and clayey muds, or arenaceous and argillaceous shales.
At the end of this first phase of its existence, the terrestrial globe was, then, covered, over nearly its whole surface, with hot and muddy water, forming extensive but shallow seas. A few islands, raising their granitic peaks here and there, would form a sort of archipelago, surrounded by seas filled with earthy matter in suspension. During a long series of ages the solid crust of the globe went on increasing in thickness, as the process of solidification of the underlying liquid matter nearest to the surface proceeded. This state of tranquillity could not last long. The solid portion of the globe had not yet attained sufficient consistency to resist the pressure of the gases and boiling liquids which it covered and compressed with its elastic crust. The waves of this internal sea triumphed, more than once, over the feeble resistances which were opposed to it, making enormous dislocations and breaches in the ground—immense upheavals of the solid crust raising the beds of the seas far above their previous levels—and thus mountains arose out of the ocean, not now exclusively granitic, but composed, besides, of those schistose rocks which have been deposited under water, after long suspension in the muddy seas.
On the other hand the Earth, as it continued to cool, would also contract; and this process of contraction, as we have already explained, was another cause of dislocation at the surface, producing either considerable ruptures or simple fissures in the continuity of the crust. These fissures would be filled, at a subsequent period, by jets of the molten matter occupying the interior of the globe—by eruptive granite, that is to say—or by various mineral compounds; they also opened a passage to those torrents of heated water charged with mineral salts, with silica, the bicarbonates of lime and magnesia, which, mingling with the waters of the vast primitive ocean, were deposited at the bottom of the seas, thus helping to increase the mass of the mineral substances composing the solid portion of the globe.
These eruptions of granitic or metallic matter—these vast discharges of mineral waters through the fractured surface—would be of frequent occurrence during the primitive epoch we are contemplating. It should not, therefore, be a matter for surprise to find the more ancient rocks almost always fractured, reduced in dimensions by faults and contortions, and often traversed by veins containing metals or their oxides, such as the oxides of copper and tin; or their sulphides, such as those of lead, of antimony, or of iron—which are now the object of the miner’s art.
[32] “Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” by Thomas Sterry Hunt, LL.D., p. 56. 1871.
[33] Cotta’s “Rocks Classified and Described,” by P. H. Lawrence, p. 232.