Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:38:08.403Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

I.—The Physiographic Significance of Laterite in Western Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

W. G. Woolnough
Affiliation:
Professor of Geology, University of Western Australia.

Extract

During the last six or seven years a series of valuable papers bearing on the origin of laterite has appeared in the Geological Magazine. The conclusions arrived at have been somewhat diverse and contradictory. Dr. Fermor, on the one hand, regarded the laterites of India as residual in character, and believed that they represented the insoluble residues left in the process of rock weathering after the soluble constituents had been removed in solution. Mr. Simpson, at the other extreme, suggested that they represented the soluble material, leached out of the subjacent rocks during weathering under peculiar conditions, and deposited as a chemically-formed rock by precipitation at the surface of the earth.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1918

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 385 note 1 Notably Fermor, L. L., “What is Laterite?”: Geol. Mag., 1911, pp. 507–16, 559–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E. S. Simpson, “Laterite in Western Australia”: ibid., 1912, pp. 399–406; A. Holmes, “The Laterite Deposits of Mozambique”: ibid., 1914, p. 529; L. L. Fermor, “The Laterites of French Guinea”: ibid., 1915, pp. 28–37, 77–82, 123–9.

page 385 note 2 For a more detailed account see J. T. Jutson, Bull. No. 61, Geol. Surv., Western Australia.

page 386 note 1 For simplicity in finding localities on the map the approximate direction and distance from Perth will be given in each case.

page 390 note 1 The difference in altitude of Chidlow's Well (30 miles E.N.E.) and Wooroloo (37 miles E.N.E.) on the eastern railway, both on the laterite “level”, amounts to 256 feet.