The Elements of Geology - William Harmon Norton (best beach reads TXT) 📗

The alongshore deposits which we have now studied are the exposed edge of a vast subaqueous sheet of waste which borders the continents and extends often for as much as two or three hundred miles from land. Soundings show that offshore deposits are laid in belts parallel to the coast, the coarsest materials lying nearest to the land and the finest farthest out. The pebbles and gravel and the clean, coarse sand of beaches give place to broad stretches of sand, which grows finer and finer until it is succeeded by sheets of mud. Clearly there is an offshore movement of waste by which it is sorted, the coarser being sooner dropped and the finer being carried farther out.

The debris torn by waves from rocky shores is far less in amount than the waste of the land brought down to the sea by rivers, being only one thirty-third as great, according to a conservative estimate. Both mingle alongshore in all the forms of beach and bar that have been described, and both are together slowly carried out to sea. On the shelving ocean floor waste is agitated by various movements of the unquiet water,—by the undertow (an outward- running bottom current near the shore), by the ebb and flow of tides, by ocean currents where they approach the land, and by waves and ground swells, whose effects are sometimes felt to a depth of six hundred feet. By all these means the waste is slowly washed to and fro, and as it is thus ground finer and finer and its soluble parts are more and more dissolved, it drifts farther and farther out from land. It is by no steady and rapid movement that waste is swept from the shore to its final resting place. Day after day and century after century the grains of sand and particles of mud are shifted to and fro, winnowed and spread in layers, which are destroyed and rebuilt again and again before they are buried safe from further disturbance.

These processes which are hidden from the eye are among the most important of those with which our science has to do; for it is they which have given shape to by far the largest part of the stratified rocks of which the land is made.

THE CONTINENTAL DELTA. This fitting term has been recently suggested for the sheet of waste slowly accumulating along the borders of the continents. Within a narrow belt, which rarely exceeds two or three hundred miles, except near the mouths of muddy rivers such as the Amazon and Congo, nearly all the waste of the continent, whether worn from its surface by the weather, by streams, by glaciers, or by the wind, or from its edge by the chafing of the waves, comes at last to its final resting place. The agencies which spread the material of the continental delta grow more and more feeble as they pass into deeper and more quiet water away from shore. Coarse materials are therefore soon dropped along narrow belts near land. Gravels and coarse sands lie in thick, wedge-shaped masses which thin out seaward rapidly and give place to sheets of finer sand.

SEA MUDS. Outermost of the sediments derived from the waste of the continents is a wide belt of mud; for fine clays settle so slowly, even in sea water,—whose saltness causes them to sink much faster than they would in fresh water,—that they are wafted far before they reach a bottom where they may remain undisturbed. Muds are also found near shore, carpeting the floors of estuaries, and among stretches of sandy deposits in hollows where the more quiet water has permitted the finer silt to rest.

Sea muds are commonly bluish and consolidate to bluish shales; the red coloring matter brought from land waste—iron oxide—is altered to other iron compounds by decomposing organic matter in the presence of sea water. Yellow and red muds occur where the amount of iron oxide in the silt brought down to the sea by rivers is too great to be reduced, or decomposed, by the organic matter present.

Green muds and green sand owe their color to certain chemical changes which take place where waste from the land accumulates on the sea floor with extreme slowness. A greenish mineral called GLAUCONITE—a silicate of iron and alumina—is then formed. Such deposits, known as GREEN SAND, are now in process of making in several patches off the Atlantic coast, and are found on the coastal plain of New Jersey among the offshore deposits of earlier geological ages.

ORGANIC DEPOSITS. Living creatures swarm along the shore and on the shallows out from land as nowhere else in the ocean. Seaweed often mantles the rock of the sea cliff between the levels of high and low tide, protecting it to some degree from the blows of waves. On the rock bench each little pool left by the ebbing tide is an aquarium abounding in the lowly forms of marine life. Below low-tide level occur beds of molluscous shells, such as the oyster, with countless numbers of other humble organisms. Their harder parts—the shells of mollusks, the white framework of corals, the carapaces of crabs and other crustaceans, the shells of sea urchins, the bones and teeth of fishes—are gradually buried within the accumulating sheets of sediment, either whole or, far more often, broken into fragments by the waves.

By means of these organic remains each layer of beach deposits and those of the continental delta may contain a record of the life of the time when it was laid. Such a record has been made ever since living creatures with hard parts appeared upon the globe. We shall find it sealed away in the stratified rocks of the continents,— parts of ancient sea deposits now raised to form the dry land. Thus we have in the traces of living creatures found in the rocks, i.e. in fossils, a history of the progress of life upon the planet.

MOLLUSCOUS SHELL DEPOSITS. The forms of marine life of importance in rock making thrive best in clear water, where little sediment is being laid, and where at the same time the depth is not so great as to deprive them of needed light, heat, and of sufficient oxygen absorbed by sea water from the air. In such clear and comparatively shallow water there often grow countless myriads of animals, such as mollusks and corals, whose shells and skeletons of carbonate of lime gradually accumulate in beds of limestone.

A shell limestone made of broken fragments cemented together is sometimes called COQUINA, a local term applied to such beds recently uplifted from the sea along the coast of Florida (Fig. 149).

OOLITIC limestone (oon, an egg; lithos, a stone) is so named from the likeness of the tiny spherules which compose it to the roe of fish. Corals and shells have been pounded by the waves to calcareous sand, and each grain has been covered with successive concentric coatings of lime carbonate deposited about it from solution.

The impalpable powder to which calcareous sand is ground by the waves settles at some distance from shore in deeper and quieter water as a limy silt, and hardens into a dense, fine-grained limestone in which perhaps no trace of fossil is found to suggest the fact that it is of organic origin.

From Florida Keys there extends south to the trough of Florida Straits a limestone bank covered by from five hundred and forty to eighteen hundred feet of water. The rocky bottom consists of limestone now slowly building from the accumulation of the remains of mollusks, small corals, sea urchins, worms with calcareous tubes, and lime-secreting seaweed, which live upon its surface.

Where sponges and other silica-secreting organisms abound on limestone banks, silica forms part of the accumulated deposit, either in its original condition, as, for example, the spicules of sponges, or gathered into concretions and layers of flint.

Where considerable mud is being deposited along with carbonate of lime there is in process of making a clayey limestone or a limy shale; where considerable sand, a sandy limestone or a limy sandstone.

CONSOLIDATION OF OFFSHORE DEPOSITS. We cannot doubt that all these loose sediments of the sea floor are being slowly consolidated to solid rock. They are soaked with water which carries in solution lime carbonate and other cementing substances. These cements are deposited between the fragments of shells and corals, the grains of sand and the particles of mud, binding them together into firm rock. Where sediments have accumulated to great thickness the lower portions tend also to consolidate under the weight of the overlying beds. Except in the case of limestones, recent sea deposits uplifted to form land are seldom so well cemented as are the older strata, which have long been acted upon by underground waters deep below the surface within the zone of cementation, and have been exposed to view by great erosion.

RIPPLE MARKS, SUN CRACKS, ETC. The pulse of waves and tidal currents agitates the loose material of offshore deposits, throwing it into fine parallel ridges called ripple marks. One may see this beautiful ribbing imprinted on beach sands uncovered by the outgoing tide, and it is also produced where the water is of considerable depth. While the tide is out the surface of shore deposits may be marked by the footprints of birds and other animals, or by the raindrops of a passing shower.

The mud of flats, thus exposed to the sun and dried, cracks in a characteristic way. Such markings may be covered over with a thin layer of sediment at the next flood tide and sealed away as a lasting record of the manner and place in which the strata were laid. In Figure 150 we have an illustration of a very ancient ripple-marked sand consolidated to hard stone, uplifted and set on edge by movements of the earth's crust, and exposed to open air after long erosion.

STRATIFICATION. For the most part the sheet of sea-laid waste is hidden from our sight. Where its edge is exposed along the shore we may see the surface markings which have just been noticed. Soundings also, and the observations made in shallow waters by divers, tell something of its surface; but to learn more of its structures we must study those ancient sediments which have been lifted from the sea and dissected by subaerial agencies. From them we ascertain that sea deposits are stratified. They lie in distinct layers which often differ from one another in thickness, in size of particles, and perhaps in color. They are parted by bedding planes, each of which represents either a change in material or a pause during which deposition ceased and the material of one layer had time to settle and become somewhat consolidated before the material of the next was laid upon it. Stratification is thus due to intermittently acting forces, such as the agitation of the water during storms, the flow and ebb of the tide, and the shifting channels of tidal currents. Off the mouths of rivers, stratification is also caused by the coarser and more abundant material brought down at time of floods being laid on the finer silt which is discharged during ordinary stages.

How stratified deposits are built up is well illustrated in the flats which border estuaries, such as the Bay of Fundy. Each advance of the tide spreads a film of mud, which dries and hardens in the air during low water before another film is laid upon it by the next incoming tidal flood. In this way the flats have been covered by a clay which splits into leaves as thin as sheets of paper.

It is in fine material, such as clays and shales and limestones, that the thinnest and most uniform layers, as well as those of widest extent, occur. On the other hand, coarse materials are commonly laid in thick beds, which soon thin out seaward and give place to deposits of finer stuff. In a general way strata are laid in well-nigh horizontal sheets, for the surface on which they are laid is generally of very gentle inclination. Each stratum, however, is lenticular, or lenslike, in form, having an area where it is thickest, and thinning out thence to its edges, where it is overlapped by strata similar in shape.

CROSS BEDDING. There is an apparent exception to this rule where strata whose upper and lower surfaces may be about horizontal are made up of layers inclined at angles which may be as high as the angle of repose. In this case each stratum grew by the addition along its edge of successive layers of sediment, precisely as does a sand bar in a river, the sand being pushed continuously over the edge and coming to rest on a sloping surface. Shoals built by strong and shifting tidal currents often show successive strata in which the