Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univers).pdf/265
zons, together with acid eruptives of all kinds common to the group, as quartz-porphyries, quartzless-porphyries, and fine-grained red granites; (3) olivine-free diabases and other basic rocks with amygdaloidal upper and lower surfaces; and (4) detrital beds, chiefly porphyry conglomerates and sandstones, rare in the lower third of the series, but increasing in thickness and frequency towards the top. These various subordinate divisions have been separated into smaller sub-divisions, and their sequence, where possible, has been carefully detailed, but since a discussion of this classification is not necessary to our present purpose it need not be entered upon.
The lowest of the divisions of rocks belonging in Irving's Keweenawan has been said to consist of a succession of heavily bedded coarse-grained olivine and orthoclase gabbros. The best exhibition of these gabbros is found in north-eastern Minnesota, where the area underlain by them occupies about 2100 miles of the surface of the state, extending from the east line of Range 1, E., to about the middle of Range 15, W. The general shape of the area is crescentic with the concave side turned toward Lake Superior and its convex side facing the north-west. In its widest part the crescent measures about twenty-two miles from south-east to north-west. The chord connecting its two horns is about 125 miles in length. The eastern extremity forms a narrow point about three miles north-west of Greenwood Lake, from which point the area extends westward, widening gradually until it reaches its broadest expanse, and then gradually contracting until it finally abuts against the north shore of St. Louis Bay west of Duluth, where it appears as a band forming the shore line for ten or twelve miles, beginning in the western portion of the city of Duluth and ending four miles east of Fond du Lac.
A second[1] area of basal gabbro is in the Bad River region in Wisconsin. Here the rock forms a narrow belt about forty-eight miles in length and from two to five miles in width, stretching from the Gogogashugun river south-westward to near Numakagon lake, in T. 43 N., R. 6 W., Wis.
- ↑ Cf. pl. XXII., Copper-Bearing Rocks.