Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/20

Cambrian (possibly in part Lower Silurian) strata can be traced, the lower portion consisting of quartzites, the central and upper parts of various limestones, sometimes abundantly fossiliferous. Nowhere else in the north of Scotland can so thick a mass of early Palæozoic rocks be seen. Elsewhere the limestones have been in large measure replaced by a complex group of schistose rocks which rest upon the Cambrian strata, and like them dip, generally at gentle angles, towards the east. It was the opinion of Murchison, and was commonly admitted by geologists, that these overlying schists represented a thick group of sediments, which, originally deposited continuously after the limestones, had been subsequently altered into their present condition by regional metamorphism. They were variously named the "Eastern schists," the "younger gneiss," the "gneissose and quartzose flagstones." Nicol, who at first shared the general opinion regarding them, afterwards maintained that they did not belong to a later formation than the limestones, but were really only the old gneiss, brought up again from beneath by enormous dislocations and over-thrusts. We now know from the labors of Professor Lapworth and the officers of the Geological Survey, that Murchison and Nicol had each seized on an essential part of the problem, but that both of them had missed the true solution. Murchison was in error regarding his younger gneiss as a continuous sequence of altered sedimentary rocks conformably resting on the Cambrian (or to use his terminology, Lower-Silurian) formations. But he sagaciously observed the coincidence of dip and strike between the schists and sedimentary rocks below them and inferred that this coincidence, traceable for many leagues, proved that the metamorphism which had given these schists their structure must have taken place after the deposition of the Durness limestones. Nicol, on the other hand, with great insight recognized that there was no continuous sequence above those limestones, but that masses of the old gneiss had been thrust over them by gigantic faults. But he failed to see that no mere faults would account for the coincidence between the structural