Petrological Notes on a Porphyry from the “Seven Stones”, Scilly Isles

Extract

During the course of work on the Pliocene deposits of West Cornwall, the writer had occasion to search a wide area forspecimens of that increasingly rare but fascinating rock, the Wolf Rock phonolite. Inquiries were mainly confined to the most likely places for securing such material, apart from the rock itself, i.e. at the cottages of fishermen accustomed to work among the dangerous reefs off Lands End and the Scilly Isles. Although personal efforts to find such specimens provedby no means abortive, it was ultimately through the good offices of the Honorary Secretary and Curator of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, Mr. J. B. Cornish, that excellent specimens of the Wolf Rock phonolite, Longships schist, and Seven Stones porphyry were obtained from a local inhabitant, who apparently had an eye for novelties to adorn his domestic mantelpiece.