Scan Electron Micrographs of Kaolins Collected from Diverse Environments of Origin—V. Kaolins Collected in Australia and Japan on Field Trips of the Sixth and Seventh Clay Conferences

Abstract

Scan electron micrographs are shown of the textures of flint clays, tonsteins, kaolin associated with combustion-metamorphism, sedimentary kaolin, and dickite from the Sydney Basin of Australia. The textures of the flint clays and tonsteins indicate those clays were derived largely from volcanic products. The clay samples were collected at stops on the Kaolin Excursion No. 4 of the August, 1976, International Geological Congress.

In like manner, kaolin samples were collected in Japan from stops made on the field excursions of the Seventh Conference of the Committee on Correlation of Age and Genesis of Kaolin which met in Tokyo, September, 1976. SEMs illustrate representative kaolins of Japan, including Gaerome and Kibushi types of kaolin, Roseki (‘wax stone’) pyrophyllite and dickite, hydrothermal kaolin at Itaya, and flint clay at Iwate. Varied morphologies of halloysite, including spherical halloysite, from the Yamaka open-pit at Naegi are micrographed.

Word descriptions of the textures are frustratingly inadequate in comparison to what may be seen at a glance in the micrographs—hence, the abstract becomes in reality a rapid view of the SEMs.