Origin of the Igneous Rocks

Extract

Sir,—I was much interested to read in your last issue the excellent review of Professor's Daly's latest work appearing above the initials “R. H. R.” May I draw your reviewer's attention to the fact that such points as the quantitative composition of the igneous rocks and the effects of assimilation upon them have been dealt with at some length in England before now, as your own pages can testify. In this Magazine as long ago as June, 1904, I entered a protest against the calculations made on a purely arm-chair basis by F. W. Clarke and A. Harker with regard to the former problem, and Mr. Clarke has, to some extent, modified his calculations as a result of this and a succeeding paper on the same subject. With regard to assimilation, a process intimately connected with the question of composition, Professor Grenville Cole has beencrying in the wilderness for many years past, and the late Dr. Johnston-Lavis has done good work in the same direction, while I attacked the problem on a much wider basis in a lengthy paper read before the British Association in 1905. This has been followed up by a general work on petrology, of which an expanded form was published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall last year. In substance itis a systematic exposition of the subject based on assimilation as opposed to the purely hypothetical ‘differentiation’ basis which has become so popular of late years. It may, perhaps, be added that Professor Daly has placed a great stumbling-block before many geologists by his advocacy of a prevailing basic magma, below the granitic one, as a primary feature of his work.