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extreme sensitiveness of quartz to pressure is emphasized (as it has been by Lehmann and the present writer) and illustrated by undulatory extinction, banding, granulation and even plastic bending around other minerals. Dynamic action is regarded as the efficient cause of the secondary impregnation of feldspar by quartz, and a union of this with weathering of the feldspar as the source of the abundant and complex pegmatitic intergrowths of quartz and feldspar.
These results are important, and they will now doubtless come to be generally recognized. It is, however, of interest to observe in this connection that all which is here announced as new in regard to secondary and "corrosion" quartz was described and figured in even greater detail by Prof. R. D. Irving ten years ago. This does not appear to be known to Dr, Romberg, for he does not allude to it, but anyone who will turn to pages 99 to 124 and plates XIII, XIV and XV of the monograph on the Lake Superior Copper Rocks (vol. 5, U. S. Geol. Survey, Washington, 1883) will find his conclusions stated in almost the same language and with a much wider range of fact and illustration. Dynamic action is not here adduced as a cause for the saturation of feldspar by secondary micropegmatitic quartz, since the Lake Superior rocks show no evidence of having been subjected to pressure, but that the quartz itself has been derived from the leaching of the feldspar substance and that the impregnation is mostly confined to the orthoclase is clearly stated.
Dr. Romberg also demonstrates, in a number of cases, the secondary origin of albite, especially as microperthite, and of microline. He gives details relating to each of the mineral constituents, and then the effects of pressure and of chemical action on the most important of them. Among many interesting observations but a few can be even mentioned here; such, for instance, as the original character of muscovite in many granites; the alteration of garnet into muscovite; the dependence of the well-known pleochroic halos in biotite and cordierite upon the substance of the zircon which they almost invariably surround, and secondary rutile needles which grow out from biotite into both quartz and feldspar. In one rock occurring in a granite a violet, strongly pleochroic mineral was found, which, in neither composition nor physical properties, agreed exactly with any known species. It seems to be intermediate between andalusite and dumortierite, but, as its individuality is not yet perfectly established, no new name is proposed for it.
G. H. Williams.