Smith. — Notes on the Kermadec Group. 341 



place in its neighbourhood. Mr. Bell informed me that in 

 March, 1886, (just three months before the Tarawera eruption,) 

 he left the island in the whaler Othello, Captain Earle, for 

 New Zealand. When 5 miles north of Sunday Island, they 

 sailed for some time through a great mass of floating pumice, 

 which was estimated to be 3 miles long by 1-| in width. This 

 was observed to be rising up from the bottom and spreading out 

 from the centre of the mass. Evidently this was a submarine 

 eruption, though no steam or other evidence of it was observed. 



The only signs of volcanic activity at present observable on 

 Sunday Island are those I have mentioned — viz., a few small 

 fumaroles in Denham Bay, some equally insignificant escapes of 

 steam from the Green Lake crater, and an outflow of hot-water 

 below high water-mark on the northern beach. The whole 

 island is covered with a dense vegetation of trees and ferns, 

 excepting in the immediate neighbourhood of the Green Lake. 



At 68 miles S.S.W. from Sunday Island is Macaulay Island, 

 which is roughly circular in shape, and about a mile and a third 

 in diameter. 



The highest point is at the western end, where a rounded 

 hill, 781 feet in height, with steep nearly perpendicular cliffs 

 on the seaside, marks the position of an old volcano. The island 

 is surrounded on all sides by perpendicular cliffs, varying in 

 height from 200 to 500 feet, and the surface is covered with a 

 smooth sward of grass. These cliffs afford a means of studying 

 its structure much better than in the case of Sunday Island. It 

 is clearly seen to be the remains of a volcanic mountain, the 

 western half of which has disappeared by denudation. The old 

 neck or throat of the volcano is still to be traced in the solid 

 lava of the western cliffs, from whence the various beds that 

 form the island slope away to the east in regular series. The 

 lowest seen is a hard andesitic lava, which forms the base at the 

 sea-level all round the island, and which has flowed from the 

 volcano at the west end. Above it comes a deep bed of light- 

 coloured pumiceous tuff, full of blocks of pumice, obsidian, and 

 fragments of andesite for a depth of about 200 feet. This bed 

 of pumice, etc., was the last ejected from the old volcano. 

 Subsequently — but after what space of time no one can tell — a 

 change took place in the locus of activity. Another and much 

 smaller crater was formed on the east side of the old one, the 

 outline of which is still quite distinct though it is imperfect in 

 shape, the eastern side having been nearly all carried away. 

 The matter first ejected from it was a series of andesitic lava 

 flows, of no great extent, which spread out in different directions 

 as they rolled down the slopes of the older mountain, following 

 in several instances the pre-existing gullies, and in one case 

 falling over the edge of the pumiceous cliff underneath in a lava 

 cascade, which now forms the only accessible ascent to the top 



