GENESIS OF THE ALKALINE ROCKS IOL 
The cited paper by Washington is worthy of special mention. 
He is certainly right in pointing out the vague nature of the expres- 
sion “alkaline suite.”’ The recognized difficulty of assigning some 
rocks to it rather than to the subalkaline suite matches the perfect 
_ transition between the two series. The use of these names involves 
danger to correct thinking if, while using them, the petrologist 
does not resist the idea that the two distinct suites really existed 
as such from the earth’s beginning. Nevertheless some general 
name for alkali-rich rocks and their syngenetic associates is useful, 
and “alkaline”’ will be here so employed. 
An illustration of the bond between the two suites is seen in 
the relation of albite-rich or oligoclase-rich lavas, the so-called 
spilites, to normal basalt, dolerite, or diabase.t. Sargent has just 
proposed the term ‘“‘auto-metamorphism,” symbolizing his con- 
clusion that the Lower Carboniferous spilites of Derbyshire have 
been derived from common basaltic magma through the ‘‘retention 
of volatile constituents resulting from the physical environment of 
a submarine flow.’ 
Though a follower of Becke in his interpretation of the “At- 
lantic”’ and “‘ Pacific’ suites, Winkler sees the intimacy of the two 
in the Eastern Alps (Steiermark). There the Pliocene was a time 
of extrusion of “Atlantic”? magma, from which nephelite regularly 
crystallized. Winkler explains contemporaneous rock types more 
characteristic of the ‘‘ Pacific” suite (normal basalts) by silication 
due to the solution of quartzose sediments in the original “ Atlantic”’ 
magma. 
Ice River intrusion, British Columbia.—Allan states that the Ice 
River intrusive furnishes “‘a very strong case in favour”’ of the 
sediment-syntectic hypothesis (desilication) as applied to nephelite 
syenites and their allies—an explanation squarely opposed to that 
(Ottawa, 1914), p. 235; A. Holmes, Mineral. Mag., XVIII (1916), 71; N. L. Bowen, 
Jour. Geol., Suppl., XXIII (1915), 59; ibid., XXV, 220; A. Harker, Jour. Geol., 
XXIV (1916), 556; R. A. Daly, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., XXVII (1916), 320. 
«Cf. S. von Szentpétery, Mitt. Mineral. Geol. Sammlung des Siebenbiirg. National- 
museums, Kolozsvar, Band I, No. 2, 1912. 
2H. C. Sargent, Nature, XCIX (1917), 59; Phil. Mag., XXXIII (1917),-535.- 
3A, Winkler, Zeit. fiir Vulkanologie, I (1914), 182. 
