GRANITE. 
75 
by piles of stones like the remains of a stratified 
mass, as in the annexed figure. 
Fig. 26. 
Granite sometimes forms veins shooting up into 
the superincumbent rocks. This is a geological fact 
of considerable importance, as it seems to indicate 
either that the granite has been in a state of fusion, 
the heat of which has softened and rent the upper 
rocks, and forced up the granite in a melted state 
into the fissures, or else that the granite and the 
rock resting immediately upon it were both in a fluid 
state at the same time, and, therefore, are contempo- 
raneous. Professor Hitchcock, in his Report on the 
Geology of Massachusetts, remarks, that " the veins 
of granite in Massachusetts penetrate only the older 
rocks, the clay slate being the latest in which they 
are found. All the older stratified rocks abound in 
them, though in quartz rock I have rarely met with 
any. In gneiss they are very common ; in talcose 
slate very rare ; in hornblende slate not common ; in 
micaceous limestone sometimes met with ; in ser- 
pentine I have never found one. In granite and sy- 
enite they are very abundant, and almost always 
the ingredients are much coarser than the granite 
or syenite that contains them." " In a large major- 
ity of cases, the intrusion of granite veins seems to 
have produced very little disturbance in the rocks 
containing them. They would seem to have been 
open fissures, filled by the injection of granitic mat- 
teri without materi^iii affacting the walls except to 
