Quartz-porphyry, in layman's terms, is a type of volcanic (igneous) rock containing large porphyritic crystals of quartz. These rocks are classified as hemi-crystalline acid rocks. Structure The quartz crystals exist in a fine-grained matrix, usually of micro-crystalline or felsitic structure. In specimens, the quartz appears as small rounded, clear, greyish, vitreous blebs, which are crystals, double hexagonal pyramids, with their edges and corners rounded by resorption or corrosion. Under the microscope they are often seen to contain rounded enclosures of the ground-mass or fluid cavities, which are frequently negative crystals with regular outlines resembling those of perfect quartz crystals. Many of the latter contain liquid carbonic acid and a bubble of gas that may exhibit vibratile motion under high magnifying powers. Variants In addition to quartz there are usually phenocrysts of feldspar, mostly orthoclase, though a varying amount of plagioclase is often present. The feldspars are usually full and cloudy from the formation of secondary kaolin and muscovite throughout their substance. Their crystals are larger than those of quartz and sometimes attain a length of two inches. Not uncommonly scales of biotite are visible in the specimens, being hexagonal plates, which may be weathered into a mixture of chlorite and epidote. Common minerals Apatite, magnetite, and zircon, all in small but frequently perfect crystals, are almost universal minerals of the quartz-porphyries. The ground-mass is finely crystalline and to the unaided eye has usually a dull aspect resembling common earthenware; it is grey, green, reddish or white. Often it is streaked or banded by flow during cooling, but as a rule these rocks are not vesicular. Two main types may be recognized by means of the microscope; the felsitic and the microcrystalline. In the former the ingredients are so fine-grained that in the thinnest slices they cannot be determined by means of the microscope. Some of these rocks show perlitic or spherulitic structure, and such rocks were probably originally glassy (obsidians or pitchstones), but by lapse of time and processes of alteration have slowly passed into very finely crystal-line state. This change is called devitrification; it is common in glasses, as these are essentially unstable. A large number of the finer quartz-porphyries are also in some degree silicified of impregnated by quartz, chalcedony and opal, derived from the silica set free by decomposition (kaolinization) of the original feldspar. This re-deposited silica forms veins and patches of indefinite shape or may bodily