528 Transactions . — Geology. 



England, Scotland, Wales, France, and elsewhere, and basalt 

 columns at Fingal's Cave, in Ireland. (Why basalt - like 

 starch should form into columns is another physical law 

 which we know little about. From my point of view, how- 

 ever, these laws rule, and are governed by a living, as it were, 

 vital energy which I have in previous papers been trying to 

 describe, although, perhaps, not very successfully.) 



But terrible as this agency appears to us, nevertheless it 

 has been gentle in its constructive action — throwing the land 

 up step by step and terrace by terrace ; aiding the work of 

 the coral insect here, and slowly lowering their gigantic 

 breakwaters there ; building huge mountains by the gradual 

 deposit of lava and ash from below the sea-level to a height 

 of 3,000ft., 10,000ft., and even 14,000ft. above it; floating 

 billions of tons of pumice over the sea and millions of tons of 

 dust through the air; slowly bulging the reefs and islands 

 outwards a few feet at a time, or washing those reefs and 

 islands away by tidal waves and strong sea-currents. But, on 

 the whole, the work has been gentle and comparatively harm- 

 less to human life ; for what is even a couple of hundred feet 

 of upheaval at the outside of any one spot — which our 

 records give — in comparison with 'the geographical extent of 

 the Pacific Ocean itself? Moreover, what is going on now 

 has always been going on. The natives reside in perfect 

 security beneath the active volcanoes, and cook their food in 

 the thermal springs. 



When I come to my third line of volcanic upheaval it will 

 be noticed how constant a suggested 200 ft. upheaval appears 

 west to east, as if volcanic energy, no longer meeting with 

 the weight of the ocean waters, expends itself 200 ft. at the 

 outside into the atmosphere. For, although Maun a Kea, in 

 Hawaii, towers up some 13,805 ft. above ocean-level, and 

 sinks down 18,000 ft. beneath the sea (3,023 fathoms) at 

 forty-three miles' distance from the shore — a far greater total 

 height than any mountain-range we find upon land — yet, so 

 far as we know, the v^hole of this mountain has been formed 

 by the deposit of volcanic lava, ash, and debris, showing what 

 a true safety-valve it has been for untold centuries of time. 

 (From this cinder-heap to San Francisco soundings show a 

 level sea-bottom upon which a railway-line could be laid as 

 upon a billiard-table.) 



To any one, too, unacquainted with the great height of 

 the mountains of Hawaii this island might appear of a com- 

 paratively small elevation, for its surface rises gradually from 

 the sea fairly uniform ; so that even the terrific energy here 

 displayed has formed only a gentle-looking mound 150 miles 

 in diameter at the base and 32,000 ft. in height, whose 

 pleasant glades supply for mankind some of the most beau- 



