Sorby in a sentence

These "glass cavities," which with many other kindred phenomena have been carefully studied by Mr. Sorby, are those in which a liquid, on cooling, has become first viscous and then solid without crystallising or undergoing a definite change in its physical structure.

Mr. Sorby admits that the frequent occurrence of fluid cavities in the quartz of granite implies that water was almost always present in the formation of this rock; but the same may be said of almost all lavas, and it is now more than forty years since Mr. Scrope insisted on the important part which water plays in volcanic eruptions, being so intimately mixed up with the materials of the lava that he supposed it to aid in giving mobility to the fluid mass.

As to the result of Mr. Sorby's experiments and speculations on this difficult subject, they may be stated in a few words.

From these facts and from the experiments and observations of Senarmont, Daubree, Delesse, Scheerer, Sorby, Sterry Hunt, and others, we are led to infer that when in the bowels of the earth there are large volumes of matter containing water and various acids intensely heated under enormous pressure, these subterranean fluid masses will gradually part with their heat by the escape of steam and various gases through fissures, producing hot springs; or by the passage of the same through the pores of the overlying and injected rocks.

Mr. Sorby demonstrated the great extent to which this mechanical theory is applicable to the slate rocks of North Wales and Devonshire (On the Origin of Slaty Cleavage by H.C. Sorby Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 1853 volume 55 page 137.), districts where the amount of change in dimensions can be tested and measured by comparing the different effects exerted by lateral pressure on alternating beds of finer and coarser materials.

By microscopic examination of minute crystals, and by other observations, Mr. Sorby has come to the conclusion that the absolute condensation of the slate rocks amounts upon an average to about one half their original volume.

Most of the scales of mica occurring in certain slates examined by Mr. Sorby lie in the plane of cleavage; whereas in a similar rock not exhibiting cleavage they lie with their longer axes in all directions.

Dr. Tyndall, when commenting in 1856 on Mr. Sorby's experiments, observed that pressure alone is sufficient to produce cleavage, and that the intervention of plates of mica or scales of oxide of iron, or any other substances having flat surfaces, is quite unnecessary.

Mr. Sorby has shown that the peculiar structure belonging to ripple-marked sands, or that which is generated when ripples are formed during the deposition of the materials, is distinctly recognisable in many varieties of mica-schists in Scotland.

Sorby, Mr., on action of water in metamorphism.

The following eight letters were written at a time when the subjects of cleavage and foliation were already occupying the minds of several geologists, including Sharpe, Sorby, Rogers, Haughton, Phillips, and Tyndall.

I have not been able to get Sorby yet, but shall not probably have anything to write on it.

Sorby read a paper to the Brit.

Finally it should be mentioned that in 1880 he received an address personally presented by members of the Council of the Birmingham Philosophical Society, as well as a memorial from the Yorkshire Naturalist Union presented by some of the members, headed by Dr. Sorby.