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Ch. 2: Manhattan Island

Ch. 2: Manhattan Island Page of 281 Ch. 2: Manhattan Island Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
MANHATTAN ISLAND
81
with reference to localities also, is as follows : " Portions of the schists or gneisses themselves are sometimes found to have become separated and inclosed within the margins of intrusive pegmatitic dikes, perhaps displaying initial stages of absorp­tion; for example, on the knoll in Riverside Park, opposite 83d Street.
" Much more important have been the results of inter­change, in reverse order, from igneous intrusions cut loose during diastrophic movements from connexion with their un­derlying magmatic sources, swallowed up and permanently imprisoned within the invaded schists and these now found in various stages of shearing, alteration, and absorption.
" Examples of the acid occlusions have been described. The amount of pegmatitic and quartzose matter thus intro­duced has been so great that huge masses of saturated gneisses have been converted, in part or wholly, into bedded granite, well shown still at Mt. Morris Park, at north end of Central Park, and on Morningside Heights." This language recalls aspects of Dr. Hunt's crenitic hypothesis, though its author would not endorse Dr. Hunt's very speculative views. Dr. Julien contends for a " vast dissemination of occluded igneous matter" in the schists of Manhattan Island, and apparently would refer the strongly biotitic (biotite is the black ferro-magnesian mica) schists of Manhattan to the assimilation of diorite intrusive dikes (which are now supposed to be repre­sented by the hornblende schists, see p. 96), from which both the iron and magnesium have been derived, which enter in the composition of the biotite mica. This theory involves the conception of the hornblende of the diorite being altered at the boundaries of the dike into biotite, and the dike becoming measurably converted into a biotitic gneiss or biotite schist, and the biotite enrichment of the mica schists, further away from the dike, being due to the hornblendic contents of the dike. This is certainly not always the case, as can be seen by examination of the hornblende schists (metamorphosed di-orites) and their adjoining mica or gneiss rocks.
Ch. 2: Manhattan Island Page of 281 Ch. 2: Manhattan Island
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