Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
White marble in Glen Dessarry, West Highlands of Scotland, occurs as three lenses associated with schists and calc-silicate rocks. The minerals identified in all these rocks are apatite, biotite, calcite, chondrodite, clinochlore, clinozoisite, diopsidic-pyroxene, dolomite, epidote, forsterite, garnet, hornblende, magnetite, phlogopite, plagioclase, potash-feldspar, pyrites, quartz, scapolite, sillimanite, sphene, vesuvianite, zoisite.
Two parageneses may be distinguished. One, due to high-grade regional metamorphism, apparently with little or no introduction of material, is a diopsidic-pyroxene, forsterite, phlogopite, calcite, dolomite association forming white marble. The other association occurs as veinlets and small irregular bodies in the white marble. It appears to be due to circulating solutions in which pyroxene and forsterite were unstable. Minerals of this paragenesis include potash-feldspar, plagioclase, scapolite, hornblende, minerals of the epidote group, calcite, and quartz. In certain localities scapolite formed at the expense of plagioclase and was succeeded by crystallization of epidote.