Crossword-Solution: OPHITIC 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 14

One could fill a volume with all the Arab, Hindoo, and other Oriental tales belonging to the beloved of "ophitic monsters." I am indebted for this very curious and ancient tale to Governor Tomah Josephs, of Peter Dana's Point, Maine.

The commonest type of structure in dolerite is the ophitic, which results from the felspar of the rock having crystallized before the augite; the latter mineral forms shapeless masses in which the idiomorphic felspars lie.

Some of the porphyritic dolerites have ophitic ground-masses; in others this structure is imperfect (subophitic); while in many the augite, like the felspar, occurs as small and distinct individuals, which react differently on polarized light, and have the outlines of more or less perfectly shaped crystals.

They may be ophitic, though often they are not, and they usually contain olivine, while their augite has distinctly purple shades, and a feeble dichroism.

When these rocks become fine-grained they pass gradually into ophitic diabase and dolerite; only very rarely does olivine enclose felspar in this way.