Art. XI. 1 Watson, The f.coparditc of North Carolina. 225 



shows the characteristic spotted apiiearance so suggestive of the 

 name "leoparditc." Except for tlie mottled or spotted appear- 

 ance produced by rounded black areas of metallic oxides, the 

 Charlotte rock differs but slightly, if at all, in essential charac- 

 ters from quartz porphyries described from other localities. (See 

 table of analyses on p. 229). 



LOCATION AND OCCURRENCE. 



The leopardite is exposed in a number of small outcrops 

 at Belmont Springs, about one and a halC miles east of Char- 

 lotte. Beginning on top of the hill, several hundred yards 

 above the spring the rock is traced in outcrops over the surface 

 for a distance of a quarter to a half mile in a north 30° east di- 

 rection. It forms a true dike, intersecting a medium textured 

 and colored, sheared and crushed, biotite granite ; and, so far, 

 as it was possible to determine, the dike nowhere exceeds 

 twenty-five feet in width, with a smaller average cross-section. 

 A small opening in one of the outcrops from which some of 

 the rock has been blasted reveals a sharp contact between the 

 quartz porphyry and the inclosing granite. 



MEGASCOPIC DESCRIPTION. 



The fresh rock is nearly white, tinged the faintest greenish 

 in places, and penetrated by long parallel streaks or pencils of 

 a dead black color. When broken at an angle to the direction 

 of the pencils, the rock surface appears spotted with rounded, 

 irregular black points, ranging in size up to half an inch in di- 

 ameter. At times the roundish points are somewhat irregular 

 and only partially developed, as shown in the lower left half of 

 Fig. I. These may be crowded close together over the surface, 

 as seen in the figure, or they may be entirely absent from some 

 areas and irregularly distributed at wide intervals over others, as 

 indicated in Fig. 3. Indeed, the black points are reported to fail 

 entirely in the rock as the dike is traced northward, when the 

 rock assumes a uniformly light color throughout. However, 

 ever)' outcrop and specimen of the rock seen by me contained 

 them. 



