Red sandstone

“ I am in a district of the New Red Sandstone, and as far as my eye can reach I see towering cliffs of a kindred formation, wheeling round or jutting out in foxy-coloured masses, while the innumerable points of shingle glow like an autumn stubble at their feet. ”

“ The flora which found its subsoil in the Old Red Sandstone north of the Grampians, belonged to a scene of things so much more modern than the flora which found its subsoil in the Old Red Sandstone of the south, that all its productions were green and flourishing, waving beside lake, river, and sea, at a time when the productions of the other were locked up, as now, in sand and shale, lime and clay,—the dead mummies of ages long departed. ”

“ NEW RED SANDSTONE. A large series of reddish-colored loams, shales, and sandstones, occurring between the Carboniferous and the Middle Triassic formations, were grouped together under this name, in contradistinction to the Old Red Sandstone group, which lies below the coal measures, and has a similar mineral structure. ”

“ That this is merely surface coloring is shown by the fact that hydro-chloric acid will discharge the color and leave the grains translucent. Unfortunately the most brilliantly colored stone is not the most durable, and it so happens that these brilliant red sandstones are often composed of exceedingly rounded grains. Also some of the very red sandstone has an interfilling of a loose argillaceous irony matter detrimental to the stone as a building stone. The most durable of the red sandstones are those having a paler or grayer hue, like those of Woolton, Everton, and Runcorn. ”

“ The widely-spread Conglomerate base of the Old Red Sandstone, which presents, over an area of so many thousand square miles, such an identity of character, that specimens taken from the neighborhood of Lerwick, in Shetland, can scarce be distinguished from specimens detached from the hills which rise over the great Caledonian Valley, contains in various places, as under the Northern Sutor, for instance, and along the shores of Navity, fragments of rock which have not been detected in situ in the districts in which they occur as agglomerated pebbles. ”

“ The sandstone seemed often argillaceous or marly, and in some cases seemed to contain beds of hard grey gritstone and ferruginous concretions. In lithological character it resembled a good deal the new red sandstone of England. I never found any fossils in it, but it appeared every where to be horizontal and conformable to the white limestones and sands above it. These latter are certainly tertiary, as they in some places contained shells of the genera area and venus apparently of species now existing on the coast, and certainly of very recent and unaltered aspect. ”

“ Moreover, in a precipitous part of the ravine of Las Bocas, a red sandstone is distinctly seen to overlie a thick bed of pale mud, also quite like the Pampean formation, abounding with concretions of true tosca-rock. This sandstone extends over many miles of country: it is as red as the brightest volcanic scoriæ; it sometimes passes into a coarse red conglomerate composed of the underlying primary rocks; and often passes into a soft white sandstone with red streaks. ”

“ This rock, as we have already remarked, is constantly accompanied by gypsum and muriate of soda. The red and somewhat argillaceous soil which results from its disintegration is far more fertile than that of the gravelly plains of the Platte, being often covered with a luxuriant growth of grasses, and affording pasturage to great numbers of herbivorous animals.
About one hundred and fifty miles west from the confluence of the Arkansa and Canadian, this red sandstone is discontinued, being succeeded, or perhaps overlaid by an extensive coal formation. ”

“ In a depression of the granitic or hypogene rocks in the States of Massachusetts and Connecticut, strata of red sandstone, shale, and conglomerate are found occupying an area more than 150 miles in length from north to south, and about 5 to 10 miles in breadth, the beds dipping to the eastward at angles varying from 5 to 50 degrees. The extreme inclination of 50 degrees is rare, and only observed in the neighbourhood of masses of trap which have been intruded into the red sandstone while it was forming, or before the newer parts of the deposit had been completed. ”

“ We were now about to bid farewell for a time to the region of sandstone, and to enter one composed of much more ancient formations, consisting of grey or red granite, porphyry, and igneous rocks; giving rise to scenery of a bolder and more majestic character, and for the most part destitute of that grotesqueness which frequently characterises the region of sandstone. ”

“ If this be the case, what stratum, if not the old red sandstone, should be seen emerging from beneath that secondary along its south-eastern margin? We will not, however, contend for the name. It is sufficient for our purpose to state, that the sandstone so abundant in all the principal ridges accessory to the Alleghany on the east, has the character of a rock belonging to the transition class of the Wernerians; that is, its {330} strata have a somewhat regular dip and inclination; it contains no beds of bituminous coal, though many of anthracite, and few organised remains. ”

“ Colored sandstone, generally red, forms the lowest observed stratum.
Wherever streams have worn deep channels, they either disclose this rock or its adjuncts, the grits, or silicious sinter. It is apparent in the chasm at Niagara Falls, about half a mile below [382] the cataract. It is often seen on the surface of the country, or buried slightly beneath the soil. In color, hardness, and other characters, there is a manifest variety. But, considered as a "formation," no doubt can exist of its unity. ”

“ We discover the still little known but highly interesting fossils of the Old Red Sandstone in one deposition; we find the beautifully preserved shells and lignites of the lias in another. There are the remains of two several creations at once before us. The shore, too, is heaped with rolled fragments of almost every variety of rock,—basalts, ironstones, hypersthenes, porphyries, bituminous shales, and micaceous schists. In short, the young geologist, had he all Europe before him, could hardly choose for himself a better field. ”

“ The oldest of these formations is the red sandstone and conglomerate, which I have called the "Desert Sandstone" formation. It is coloured blue on the map, and forms a narrow strip along the margin of the old crystalline rocks. [3] It is capped by the fossiliferous limestone of the Wâdy Nasb, which shows it to belong to the Carboniferous period—in fact, to be the representative of the Carboniferous Limestone of Europe and the British Isles. It is also found east of the Arabah Valley and amongst the mountains of Moab east of The Ghôr. ”

“ Upon a floor of granite-gneiss, and alternating beds of quartzite and shale belonging to an older series, are deposited heavy beds of red sandstone with many conglomerate lenses. The sandstone strata are measurably deformed and their upper surfaces moderately dissected. ”

“ This is more especially true with respect to the second or Waterstone subdivision of the New red sandstone, the dark brown or pale red sandstones of which, with their interstratified marls and calcareous bands, are scarcely distinguishable by any lithological characters from similar beds in the Permian formation. There are, however, we believe, no brick-red sandstones like that of the Bunter, and scarcely any quartzose conglomerate to be found in the Permian formation ”

“ The sandstone pillars generally taper from the base upwards to a short distance from the tops, which are flattened out or surmounted by slabs or blocks of sandstone 90 of fantastic outline, and they are called by names derived from fancied likenesses to animals, birds, and men. The juxtaposition of the most brilliantly hued, dazzling-red blocks and strata, with masses of the same material of milky whiteness, gives the impression that the scene is the work of human hands; it seems too quaint and artificial for the hand of Nature, to which alone it is due ”

“ EXPLORE IN ITS VICINITY. COUNTRY ABOUT GANTHEAUME BAY. GEOLOGICAL REMARKS. CROSS A DISTRICT OF RED SANDSTONE.
Whilst all hands were employed in endeavouring to repair damages I ascended a hill to reconnoitre our present position and found we were in a country of a pleasing and romantic appearance, and although the land was not good the nature of the soil made me aware that we were most probably in the vicinity of a large tract of better quality; indeed this was the only part of South-west Australia in which I had met with the ancient red sandstone of the north-west coast ”

“ They were the footprints of the sand-piper, a bird of which he saw flights daily running along the water's edge, and often leaving thirty or more similar impressions in a straight line, parallel to the borders of the estuary. He picked up some slabs of this dried mud, and splitting one of them up, found a surface within which bore two lines of the same kind of footprints. Here is an example before our living eyes, of the processes concerned in producing and preserving the fossil footprints of the New Red Sandstone. ”

“ The sea-shore, the river-beds, the great Sahara, are sand, sand, sand. As sand is the most plentiful loose material in the earth now, so no doubt it has always been, and we find that sandstone, namely, rock made of sand, is the most abundant in the structure of the globe. The grains of quartz themselves are naturally gray or white, but they are covered with a film or crust which takes different hues from coloring matter mixed with it. In iron regions the sandstone is red, and in anthracite coal regions the sandstone is dark gray or nearly black. ”

“ The Gaspé sandstones, as their name imports, are predominantly arenaceous, and often coarsely so, the sandstones being frequently composed of large grains and studded with quartz-pebbles. Grey and buff are prevalent colours, but red beds also occur, more especially in the upper portion. There are also interstratified shaly beds, sometimes occurring in groups of considerable thickness, and associated with fine-grained and laminated argillaceous sandstone, the whole having in many places the lithological aspect of the coal-measures. ”

“ The sandstone predominates in some parts of the range, forming small cliffs, underneath which there are steep acclivities of sand. It contains nearly an equal quantity of black flinty slate, or lydian stone, and white quartz in its composition, and greatly resembles the friable sandstones of the lignite formation at the mouth of Bear Lake River. 186In some parts the soil has a red colour from the disintegration of a reddish-brown slate-clay. ”

“ Sandstone, Old Red.—Composition of the more distant ranges on the Morumbidgee. Forms abrupt precipices over the river flats; of sterile appearance, and covered with Banksias and scrub.
Mica Slate.—Colour dark brown, approaching red; mica glittering. The hills enclosing Pondebadgery Plain at the gorge of the valley of the Morumbidgee, are composed of this rock. They are succeeded by
Sandstone.—Which rises abruptly from the river in perpendicular cliffs, of 145 feet in height. ”

“ Sand Plains—Mississippi Hawk—Small-leaved Elm—Wild Horses—Hail-storm—Climate—Bisons—Grapes—Red Sand Formation—Gypsum.
August 15th. Extensive tracts of loose sand, so destitute of plants, and so fine as to be driven with the wind, occur in every part of the saline sandstone formation we had as yet seen. They are perhaps invariably the detritus of the sand-rock, deposited in valleys and depressions, where the rapidity of the abrading currents has been checked by permanent obstacles. This loose sand differs in colour from the sandstone, which is almost invariably red ”

“ As soon as we ascend the mountains, we meet with a slaty sand-stone of various compactness, as it possesses more or less iron, often forming an excellent iron ore. A variety of this iron ore has been lately turned to a good use, in the manufacture of a red paint, near Knoxville, Tennessee. Different varieties of this sandstone possess different qualities. It is converted by the inhabitants into millstones, grindstones, and whetstones. ”

“ The bed is an argillaceous sandstone which has a pronounced brick red color. It seems worthy of note that the bed carrying marine fossils is distinctly redder than the non-fossiliferous part of the sandstone. The southwestern section of the Bays sandstone along Walker Mountain, carrying the fossiliferous horizon, is also, on the whole, a deeper red than the section along the mountain to the northeast, which is practically barren of fossils. ”

“ As building stones sandstones are much in favour, especially in the Carboniferous districts of Britain, where they can readily be obtained. They have the advantage of being durable, strong and readily dressed. They are usually laid “on the bed,” that is to say, with their bedding surfaces horizontal and their edges exposed. The finer kinds of sandstone are often sawn, not hewn or trimmed with chisels. Pure siliceous sandstones are the most durable, but are often very expensive to dress and are not obtainable in many places. Sandstones are also used for grindstones and for millstones. ”

“ In this variety we have sometimes observed the lead ore either disseminated, or forming horizontal veins between the laminæ of sandstone. An examination of some spots might lead to the conclusion that the soil in which most of the lead has hitherto been found, has resulted from the disintegration of a sandstone of this kind.
Sandstone, though often covered at the surface by compact limestone or some other stratum is probably the rock which occurs in the greatest quantity throughout every part of this range of mountains. ”