The Elements of Geology. William Harmon Norton
These are pits, commonly funnel shaped, formed by the enlargement of crevice or joint by percolating water, or by the breakdown of some portion of the roof of a cave. By clogging of the outlet a sink hole may come to be filled by a pond.
Central Florida is a limestone region with its drainage largely subterranean and in part below the level even of the sea. Sink holes are common, and many of them are occupied by lakelets. Great springs mark the point of issue of underground streams, while some rise from beneath the sea. Silver Spring, one of the largest, discharges from a basin eight hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep a little river navigable for small steamers to its source. About the spring there are no surface streams for sixty miles.
Fig. 32. Underground Stream Issuing from Base of Cliff, the Karst, Austria
The Karst. Along the eastern coast of the Adriatic, as far south as Montenegro, lies a belt of limestone mountains singularly worn and honeycombed by the solvent action of water. Where forests have been cut from the mountain sides and the red soil has washed away, the surface of the white limestone forms a pathless desert of rock where each square rod has been corroded into an intricate branch work of shallow furrows and sharp ridges. Great sink holes, some of them six hundred feet deep and more, pockmark the surface of the land. The drainage is chiefly subterranean. Surface streams are rare and a portion of their courses is often under ground. Fragmentary valleys come suddenly to an end at walls of rock where the rivers which occupy the valleys plunge into dark tunnels to reappear some miles away. Ground water stands so far below the surface that it cannot be reached by wells, and the inhabitants depend on rain water stored for household uses. The finest cavern of Europe, the Adelsberg Grotto, is in this region. Karst, the name of a part of this country, is now used to designate any region or landscape thus sculptured by the chemical action of surface and ground water. We must remember that Karst regions are rare, and striking as is the work of their subterranean streams, it is far less important than the work done by the sheets of underground water slowly seeping through all subsoils and porous rocks in other regions.
Even when gathered into definite channels, ground water does not have the erosive power of surface streams, since it carries with it little or no rock waste. Regions whose underground drainage is so perfect that the development of surface streams has been retarded or prevented escape to a large extent the leveling action of surface running waters, and may therefore stand higher than the surrounding country. The hill honeycombed by Luray Cavern, Virginia, has been attributed to this cause.
Fig. 33. Stalactites and Stalagmites, Marengo Cavern, Indiana
Cavern deposits. Even in the zone of solution water may under certain circumstances deposit as well as erode. As it trickles from the roof of caverns, the lime carbonate which it has taken into solution from the layers of limestone above is deposited by evaporation in the air in icicle-like pendants called stalactites. As the drops splash on the floor there are built up in the same way thicker masses called stalagmites, which may grow to join the stalactites above, forming pillars. A stalagmitic crust often seals with rock the earth which accumulates in caverns, together with whatever relics of cave dwellers, either animals or men, it may contain.
Can you explain why slender stalactites formed by the drip of single drops are often hollow pipes?
The zone of cementation. With increasing depth subterranean water becomes more and more sluggish in its movements and more and more highly charged with minerals dissolved from the rocks above. At such depths it deposits these minerals in the pores of rocks, cementing their grains together, and in crevices and fissures, forming mineral veins. Thus below the zone of solution where the work of water is to dissolve, lies the zone of cementation where its work is chemical deposit. A part of the invisible load of waste is thus transferred from rocks near the surface to those at greater depths.
As the land surface is gradually lowered by weathering and the work of rain and streams, rocks which have lain deep within the zone of cementation are brought within the zone of solution. Thus there are exposed to view limestones, whose cracks were filled with calcite (crystallized carbonate of lime), with quartz or other minerals, and sandstones whose grains were well cemented many feet below the surface.
Cavity filling. Small cavities in the rocks are often found more or less completely filled with minerals deposited from solution by water in its constant circulation underground. The process may be illustrated by the deposit of salt crystals in a cup of evaporating brine, but in the latter instance the solution is not renewed as in the case of cavities in the rocks. A cavity thus lined with inward-pointing crystals is called a geode.
Concretions. Ground water seeping through the pores of rocks may gather minerals disseminated throughout them into nodular masses called concretions. Thus silica disseminated through limestone is gathered into nodules of flint. While geodes grow from the outside inwards, concretions grow outwards from the center. Nor are they formed in already existing cavities as are geodes. In soft clays concretions may, as they grow, press the clay aside. In many other rocks concretions are made by the process of replacement. Molecule by molecule the rock is removed and the mineral of the concretion substituted in its place. The concretion may in this way preserve intact the lamination lines or other structures of the rock (Fig. 34). Clays and shales often contain concretions of lime carbonate, of iron carbonate, or of iron sulphide. Some fossil, such as a leaf or shell, frequently forms the nucleus around which the concretion grows.
Why are building stones more easily worked when “green” than after their quarry water has dried out?
Fig. 34. Concretions in Sandstone, Wyoming
Deposits of ground water in arid regions. In arid lands where ground water is drawn by capillarity to the surface and there evaporates, it leaves as surface incrustations the minerals held in solution. White limy incrustations of this nature cover considerable tracts in northern Mexico. Evaporating beneath the surface, ground water may deposit a limy cement in beds of loose sand and gravel. Such firmly cemented layers are not uncommon in western Kansas and Nebraska, where they are known as “mortar beds.”
Thermal springs. While the lower limit of surface drainage is sea level, subterranean water circulates much below that depth, and is brought again to the surface by hydrostatic pressure. In many instances springs have a higher temperature than the average annual temperature of the region, and are then known as thermal springs. In regions of present or recent volcanic activity, such as the Yellowstone National Park, we may believe that the heat of thermal springs is derived from uncooled lavas, perhaps not far below the surface. But when hot springs occur at a distance of hundreds of miles from any volcano, as in the case of the hot springs of Bath, England, it is probable that their waters have risen from the heated rocks of the earth’s interior. The springs of Bath have a temperature of 120° F., 70° above the average annual temperature of the place. If we assume that the rate of increase in the earth’s internal heat is here the average rate, 1° F. to every sixty feet of descent, we may conclude that the springs of Bath rise from at least a depth of forty-two hundred feet.
Water may descend to depths from which it can never be brought back by hydrostatic pressure. It is absorbed by highly heated rocks deep below the surface. From time to time some of this deep- seated water may be returned to open air in the steam of volcanic eruptions.
Fig. 35. Calcareous Deposits from Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park
Surface deposits of springs. Where subterranean water returns to the surface highly