Schists are hard to photography and capture their details; all the minerals tend to be mashed together. The details are even hard to see when the specimen is in front of you. However, go to A Very Large Picture, and you can see the intermixing of the minerals better.

 

 

Slates are part of a metamorphic sequence that begins with shale and progresses through slate, phyllite, schist, and gneiss. At the top of this column you can click through rocks showing the changes. Or go to Barrovian Metamorphic Changes.

 

   

 Schists have intermixed quartz, feldspar, and mica (biotite and/or muscovite), and often amphibole. This specimen is dominated by biotite, quartz, and feldspar. Often other minerals are present too, such as garnet and staurolite, but none are present in this particular specimen.

 

 

 

 

 

     

Schistose foliation is composed of intermixed quartz, feldspar, and biotite (with some possible amphibole). The minerals in this specimen are well intermixed, characteristic of the schistose pattern, although at this scale one might want to call it gneissic banding. It is a matter of scale though; if you have to get this close to see the minerals separating into bands you are still in the schist realm.