Hector. — Presidential Address. 469 



barrelled, having two orifices which alternately spouted out 

 showers of hot water and dark-coloured stones to a height of 

 700 to 800 feet. These showers sometimes were oblique, and, 

 clashing together, the stones fell on the outside slope of the 

 crater, so that they are building up a miniature cone. This 

 fissure, with its vents, will become an important feature in the 

 district. Of course we have lost the lake and the terraces ; and 

 all that was gained was this hideous fissure and the active conea 

 on Tarawera, which, he believed, will soon become dormant, 

 and probably the only marked new feature resulting from the 

 outbreak will be Mount Hazard, and the fissure, that will fill 

 with water and become a lake. 



He again repeated that, so far as he was able to see, up to 

 the time when he left, there was no development of lava ; and, 

 therefore, if that were the essential feature of a volcanic eruption, 

 there had been no proper eruption, merely a much more gigantic 

 development than usual of great hydro-thermal forces, the con- 

 version of heat and water into steam, and the dispersal, by its 

 agency, through the atmosphere of an immense volume of rock 

 fragments derived from superficial strata. 



The study of this wonderful phenomenon fully explained 

 how the rock terraces of the Waikato, which extend into its 

 lateral valleys, have been smothered by pumice and re- 

 excavated. This was formerly difficult to understand ; but the 

 whole mystery disappears m the light thrown on the subject by 

 this eruption. The valleys were excavated by running water ; 

 but, instead of being filled and protected by great shingle flats, 

 as in the Southern Alps, there had been in former times sudden 

 eruptions of pumice sand, which had filled the valleys, and then 

 the water had, with extraordinary rapidity, re-excavated the 

 terraces dow^n to the original bed-rock. The same applied to 

 the valleys towards the East Coast ; so that the cutting of the 

 pumice terraces had nothmg to do with the original cutting- out 

 of the rock terraces themselves. 



The conclusion to be arrived at was that this eruption was 

 on a very gigantic scale, but was yet a very simple one as far 

 as we know. He had a clear view from every point accessible. 

 The party passed so close to White Island that we were able to 

 see it quite active ; in a like manner, Rotorua and other hot 

 springs all showed extra activity, but there is nothing more 

 in this than is usual after a great change in the weather or in 

 barometric pressure. At Tokano there was no change whatever. 

 It is mentioned as if new that there is a lake on Ruapehu, but if 

 they looked at the model of that mountain in the Museum that 

 was made years ago they would observe the very lake. This 

 lake was first described by Messrs. Maxwell and Beetham, and 

 steam is often seen rising from it, as if fi:om a warm pool in cold 

 weather. The fact of its being a lake surrounded by permanent 



