Lava Vesuvius between May 14 and June 4, 1737. Serao described "a flow of fiery lava" as an analogy to the flow of water and mud down the flanks of the volcano following heavy rain. The composition of almost all lava of the Earth's crust is dominated by silicate minerals, mostly feldspars, olivine, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas and quartz. Igneous rocks, which form lava flows when erupted, can be classified into three chemical types: "felsic", "intermediate", and "mafic" (four if one includes the super-heated "ultramafic"). These classes are primarily chemical, however, the chemistry of lava also tends to correlate with the magma
Tholeiitic magma series distinguished from rocks in the calc-alkaline magma series by the redox state of the magma they crystallized from (tholeiitic magmas are reduced; calc-alkaline magmas are oxidized ). When the parent magmas of basalts crystallize, they preferentially crystallize the more magnesium-rich and iron-poor forms of the silicate minerals olivine and pyroxene, causing the iron content of tholeiitic magmas to increase as the melt is depleted of iron-poor crystals. However, a calc-alkaline magma is oxidized enough to precipitate significant amounts of the iron oxide magnetite, causing the iron content of the magma to remain more steady as it cools than with a