The Serpentines and Associated Rocks and Minerals of the Shetland Islands

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Abstract
The Shetland Islands consist largely of a foundation of metamorphic rocks—schists and paragneisses, with associated limestones and quartzites—upon which rest, with marked unconformity, patches of sediment of Old Red Sandstone age. In the north of Mainland is a magnificent development of igneous products of this same age. Earlier than the Old Red Sandstone however, there was injected into the older rocks a series of intrusions, rolled pebbles of which occur in the basal conglomerates of the Old Red. These older intrusions range from granites to the ultrabasic rocks which, more particularly form the subject of the present investigation. Shetland has so far received scant attention from geologists; hence very little previous literature can be noted. So far as petrographical investigations are concerned, the field is practically untouched. The earlier writings of Jameson (1) and Hibbert (2) are of historical interest only. Heddle (3, 5, 7, 19), who carried out an exhaustive study of the mineralogy of the islands, seems to have given less attention to the geology He does devote some space, however, to the question of the origin of the serpentines, and concludes that they were produced by the metamorphism of the associated gabbro (3, p. 12). This view was accepted at a later date by Peach & Home (4, p. 782), but to these authors belongs the credit for most of the really sound work contributing to our knowledge of the geology of the area. Sir John Flett mentions the serpentines and pyroxenites in a discussion on a

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