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IV.—The Application of Petrological and Quantitative Methods to Stratigraphy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

P. G. H. Boswell
Affiliation:
Imperial College, London, S.W.

Extract

Although detrital mineral work is as yet in its infancy, sufficient has been accomplished to show that we may look to it with success for indications of changes of drainage direction, evidences of denudation by reversal of the order of respective mineral assemblages from a sequence of rocks, and generally for information regarding details of palæogeography. Professor A. de Lapparent referred to Professor L. Cayeux's work as proving the proximity of land, composed of primary rocks, to Lille in Landénian times. Dr. H. H. Thomas was able to demonstrate the change in source, and therefore in direction of drainage, of the river-borne heavy minerals in the Bunter sandstones of South Devon, the occurrence of garnets and staurolite being especially significant. Dr. T. O. Bosworth, in some preliminary work upon the detrital minerals of the Carboniferous Sandstone of the Midland Valley of Scotland, was led to the conclusion, partly by the respective presence and absence of garnets, that the beds could be divided into a series of great lenticular masses of sediment introduced from directions varying from north and north-west to north-east, east, and south. Mr. W. R. Smellie has discussed in rather more detail the origin of the minerals in the Upper Red Barren Measures of the Glasgow Basin, the drainage having been from the west or north-west.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1916

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References

page 163 note 2 This idea was suggested for contained boulders by Professor Charles Lapworth in connexion with the Carboniferous conglomerates of Halesowen in Worcestershire.

page 163 note 3 Traité de Géologie, 5th ed., vol. iii, p. 1492, 1906.

page 163 note 4 Q.J.G.S., vol. lviii, p. 620 (Sand of Bunter Pebble-bed), 1902; vol. lxv, p. 229 (New Red Sandstone), 1909.Google Scholar

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page 164 note 1 Abstr. Proc. Geol. Soc., No. 973, p. 76, etc., 1915.Google Scholar

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page 165 note 1 Abstr. Proc. Geol. Soc., No. 973, p. 76, 1915.Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 Very recently (March, 1916), in a lecture before the Geologists' Association, my friend and colleague, Mr. V. C. Illing, has claimed that the horizons of the unfossiliferous and oil-bearing sediments of the south-western part of Trinidad may be identified and correlated over a limited area by means of their mineral assemblages. If this contention is supported by the evidence (and from an examination of the residues I believe it is), the hitherto purely academic study of the petrology of sediments becomes at one bound of great economic importance.

page 167 note 1 The disturbance referred to may be 150 yards long and 40 feet deep.

page 168 note 1 Jones, W., Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. xxii, p. 232, 1911.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 168 note 2 Rastall, R. H. & Wilcockson, W. H., Proc. Geol. Soc., p. lxxx, 1915.Google Scholar