VI.—A Cordierite-bearing Lava from the Lake District

Extract

Although the volcanic rocks of the English Lake District have received notice from time to time, any systematic account of them from the petrographical side has yet to be written. The most recent contribution, by the late Mr. E. E. Walker, treated especially of the mode of occurrence of the garnet, which is so common a constituent, not only of the lavas and tuffs, but of the associated intrusive rocks, probably referable to the same Ordovician age. There can be no doubt that this mineral is sometimes a primary constituent, but very often a product of metamorphism. The object of the present note is to record the occurrence in one instance of a rarer mineral, which has not hitherto been observed in this series of rocks. Cordierite is found as a product of thermal metamorphism in the Coniston Flags near the Shap Granite, and in the Skiddaw Slates of the Skiddaw granite area. In the latter it is remarkably abundant and wide-spread. The mineral is now found to occur, as an exceptional constituent, in the volcanic series.