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THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY.

The only other alteration noticed in the diallage is along its edges, where brown and green hornblendes are developed, and in one case where the pyroxene is replaced in part by rosettes of chlorite that polarize in bright blue tints. The very deep pink color of some of the diallage plates may be due to incipient alteration, as along with the change in color there is produced a finely fibrous structure. The writer has searched earnestly for indications of enstatite[1] in the rock under consideration, but has failed to discover any, though strongly pleochroic hypersthene is present in large quantity in certain of its phases to be mentioned later. In one or two specimens of the normal gabbro there is also a little hypersthene, but it is not finely fibrous, and it occurs as very compact plates side by side with equally compact and very fresh plates of diallage.

Much of the pyroxene, as has been said, is in the interstices between the plagioclase and therefore is probably younger than this constituent. It is, however, not in the ophitic areas characteristic of diabasic pyroxene, but is usually in narrow stringers between the feldspar grains, and between these and the olivine. In some sections every grain of olivine is thus separated from plagioclase (Fig. 1), while in other sections, where this is not the case, the diallage is in too small quantity to serve this purpose. Narrow rims of this mineral also exist around magnetite and biotite, and they occur between these two minerals and olivine and a fibrous growth that surrounds them, especially the olivine, in a manner resembling a reaction rim.

Attempts to isolate the diallage for analysis were not successful, as it was found impracticable to free its powder from hypersthene and the brown earthy decomposition products of olivine.

The last mentioned mineral is usually quite fresh, and in large quantity, though in a few specimens it is represented by only an occasional grain in the thin section. Since it was one of the first separations from the magma yielding the rock, it is always present in more or less well defined idiomorphic grains. These are

  1. Cf. M. E. Wadsworth: Nos. 787 and 692, pp. 90 and 91.Bull. No. 2 Minn. Geol. Survey.