Serpentine and Diallage Rocks. 267 



Veran) ; of Mont Rosa and of the Grisons ; the serpentinous 

 rocks of the Tyrol ; of the chain of the High Tauerngebirge in 

 Salzburg ; of the Pinzgau, of Stiria, Austria ; of the Rosalin- 

 gebirge near Bernstein in Hungary ; of the Eastern and Wes- 

 tern Bohmerwaldgebirge ; of the Fichtelgebirge, of Saxony, 

 Silesia ; and of the Carpathian Chain and of Wallachia. 



The greater number of these serpentines are situated in tal- 

 cose slates, or among the most recent primitive slates ; some few 

 are associated with whitestone or leptinite, as in Saxony, be- 

 tween Waldenheim and Waldenberg ; in Austria at Grabenhof, 

 near Gansbach ; at Altenburg on the Kamp ; and at Namier 

 in Moravia. Some others are in gneiss, or even in granite, as 

 at Toplitz in Saxony ; also in the Fichtelgebirge, Bohmer- 

 waldgebirge, the Tyrol, and Stiria. These serpentine depo- 

 sits are sometimes very considerable, forming occasionally 

 groupes of mountains, as the Mont Rosa in Piedmont, in 

 Liguria, and Hungary. In other quarters, they appear only 

 under the form of bed-like veins or short beds. These last are 

 some feet or fathoms in thickness, as at Lettowitz in Moravia, 

 Portsoy in Scotland, &c. ; or they are so thick as to form hills, 

 or the summits of hills, during many miles, as in Liguria, near 

 Genoa, Savona, in the Fichtelgebirge, and in the Shetland 

 islands. 



Serpentine hills have a sterile, dark, and knotted surface, not 

 unlike that of hypersthene syenite ; and their immediate junc- 

 tion with the primitive slate is seldom visible. On the other 

 hand, the great beds of serpentine usually contain imbedded 

 masses of slate and limestone ; and these diiFer somewhat in 

 structure from the neighbouring rocks of the same kinds. In 

 this way, the bed-like veins of Portsoy contain blackish green 

 talcose rocks, which are slightly slaty, and seem to have been 

 fused in the serpentine mass ; and this last rock is closely united 

 with hornblende rocks. In western Liguria, great beds of ser- 

 pentine inclose quartzose and talcose slates, which are much 

 broken and contorted ; or they contain immense masses of lime- 

 stone, which are to be viewed di'^ fragments or displaced masses, 

 because their stratification is not the same as in the limestone 

 next to the serpentine vein ; and besides this, limestone is 

 cracked, granular, foliated, and magnesian. 



