TACHYLYTES, or Tachylites (from Gr. ταχύς, swift,
λύειν, to dissolve, meaning "easily fused," though some have erroneously interpreted it as "easily soluble in acids"), in petrology, the vitreous forms of the basic igneous rocks; in other words, they are basaltic obsidians. They are black in colour, dark brown in the thinnest sections, with a resinous lustre and the appearance of pitch, often more or less vesicular and sometimes spherulitic. They are very brittle, and break down readily under the hammer. Small crystals of felspar or of olivine are sometimes visible in them with the unaided eye. All tachylytes weather rather easily, and by oxidation of their iron become dark brown or red. Three modes of occurrence characterize this rock. In all cases they are found under conditions which imply rapid cooling, but they are much less common than acid volcanic glasses (or obsidians), the reason being apparently that the basic rocks have a stronger tendency to crystallize, partly because they are more liquid and the molecules have more freedom to arrange themselves in crystalline order.
The fine scoria ashes or "cinders" thrown out by basaltic volcanoes are often spongy masses of tachylyte with only a few larger crystals or phenocrysts imbedded in black glass. Such tachylyte bombs and scoria are frequent in Iceland, Auvergne, Stromboli, Etna, and are very common also in the ash beds or tuffs of older date, such as occur in Skye, Midlothian and Fife, Derbyshire, and elsewhere. Basic pumices of this kind are exceedingly widespread on the bottom of the sea, either dispersed in the "red clay" and other deposits or forming layers coated with oxides of manganese, precipitated on them from the sea water. These tachylyte fragments, which are usually much decomposed by the oxidation and hydration of their ferrous compounds, have taken on a dark red colour. This altered basic glass is known as "palagonite"; concentric bands of it often surround kernels of unaltered tachylyte, and are so soft that they are easily cut with a knife. In the palagonite the minerals also are decomposed, and are represented only by pseudomorphs. The fresh tachylyte glass, however, often contains lozenge-shaped crystals of plagioclase felspar and small prisms of augite and olivine, but all these minerals very frequently occur mainly as microlites or as beautiful skeletal growths with sharply pointed corners or ramifying processes. Palagonite tuffs are found also among the older volcanic rocks. In Iceland a broad stretch of these rocks, described as "the palagonite formation," is said to cross the island from south-west to north-east. Some of these tuffs are fossiliferous; others are intercalated with glacial deposits. The lavas with which they occur are mostly olivine-basalts. Palagonite tuffs are found in Sicily, the Eifel, Hungary, Canary Islands, &c.
A second mode of occurrence of tachylyte is in the form of lava flows. Basaltic rocks often contain a small amount of glassy ground-mass, and in the limburgites this becomes more important and conspicuous, but vitreous types are far less common in these than in the acid lavas. In the Hawaiian Islands, however, the volcanoes have poured out vast floods of black basalt, containing felspar, augite, olivine, and iron ores in a black glassy base. They are highly liquid when discharged, and the rapid cooling which ensues on their emergence to the air prevents crystallization taking place completely. Many of them are spongy or vesicular, and their upper surfaces are often exceedingly rough and jagged, while at other times they assume rounded wave-like forms on solidification. Great caves are found where the crust has solidified and the liquid interior has subsequently flowed away, and stalactites and stalagmites of black tachylyte adorn the roofs and floors. On section these growths show usually a central cavity enclosed by walls of dark brown glass in which skeletons and microliths of augite, olivine and felspar lie imbedded. From the crater of Kilauea thin clouds of steam rise constantly, and as the bubbles of vapour are liberated from the molten rock they carry into the air with them thin fibres of basalt which solidify at once and assume the form of tachylyte threads. Under the microscope they prove to be nearly completely glassy with small circular air vesicles sometimes drawn out to long tubes. Only in the Hawaiian Islands are glassy basaltic lavas of this kind at all common.
A third mode of occurrence of tachylyte is as the margins and thin offshoots of dikes or sills of basalt, dolerite and diabase. They are sometimes only a fraction of an inch in thickness, resembling a thin layer of pitch or tar on the edge of a crystalline dolerite dike, but veins several inches thick are sometimes met with. In these situations tachylyte is rarely vesicular, but it often shows very pronounced fluxion banding accentuated by the presence of rows of spherulites which are visible as dark brown rounded spots. The spherulites have a distinct radiate structure and sometimes exhibit zones of varying colour. The non-spherulitic glassy portion is sometimes perlitic and these rocks are always brittle. The commonest crystals are olivine, augite and felspar, with swarms of minute dusty black grains of magnetite. At the extreme edges the glass is often perfectly free from crystalline products, but it merges rapidly into the ordinary crystalline dolerite, which in a very short distance may
contain no vitreous base whatever. The spherulites may form the
greater part of the mass, they may be a quarter of an inch in diameter
and are occasionally much larger than this. These coarsely spherulitic
rocks pass over into the variolites (q.v.) by increasing coarseness
in the fibres of their spherulites, which soon become recognizable
as needles of felspar or feathery growths of augite. The ultimate
product of decomposition in this case also is a red palagonitic
substance, but owing to the absence of steam cavities the tachylyte
selvages of dikes are more often found in a fresh state than the
basic lapilli in ash-beds. Many occurrences of basaltic pitchstones
have been reported from Skye, Mull, and the western part of Scotland;
they are found also in connexion with the intrusive dolerite
sills of the north of England and the centre of Scotland. In the
Saar district of Germany similar rocks occur, some of which have
been described as weisselbergites (from Weisselberg).
Other localities for tachylytes of this group are Nassau, Silesia
and Sweden.
The chemical composition of some of the rocks of this group is
indicated by the analyses given below:—
SiO2
Al2O3
FeO
Fe2O3
CaO
MgO
Na2O
K2O
H2O
I. Palagonite. Seljadalr, Iceland......................
II. Palagonite from deep-sea deposits, Pacific
Ocean (with 2.89% MnO2)
III. Franz Joseph Land.....................................
IV. Tachylyte. Ardtun, Mull, Scotland................
V. Tachylyte. The Beal, Portree, Skye.............
