MISCELLANY, 



379 



MISCELLANY. 



Volcanic Eruption in tlie Sandwich 

 Islands. — A correspondent of the American 

 Journal of Science writes that, until the past 

 year, the great summit crater of Mauna Loa 

 (Sandwich Islands) has for a number of 

 years shown but few and feeble symptoms 

 of activity. For a few days in August, 

 1872, there was a brilliant light in the 

 crater, and again on the 6th and ■'7th of 

 January, 1873, there were vivid demon- 

 strations, which roused the attention of 

 many witnesses. But it was not until the 

 20th of April, 1873, that a continuous ex- 

 hibition of mountain pyrotechnics com- 

 menced. From that day down to the date 

 of the letter (January 6, 1874), the action 

 within the great caldron was incessant. 

 Most of the time the boiling was vehement. 

 " The scene was never more brilliant than 

 a few nights ago. Sustained jets of molten 

 rock were constantly rising 50 to 200 feet 

 within the mural caldron, and the surg- 

 ings, puffings, and roarings, have been heard 

 low down the sides of the mountain, and, 

 as some testify, as far as Reed's Ranch, 

 probably fifteen miles." The most distin- 

 guishing feature of this eruption, however, 

 was its duration. The eruption of 1855-'56 

 flowed fifteen months ; but this rent the 

 mountain laterally, and flowed longitudinal- 

 ly ; whereas the present eruption has made 

 no lateral vent, and found no outlet, so far 

 as known. During all this time Kilauea 

 was unequally active. The great depres- 

 sion of Kilauea, caused by the eruption of 

 1868, is fast filling up by repeated over- 

 flows from the south lake, while all around 

 that lake a vast mound is rising, whose 

 summit is nearly as high as the southern 

 rim of Kilauea, and it may soon over- 

 look it. 



Need of a New Chronology. — From the 

 presence of the Egyptian Pyramids, Bay- 

 ard Taylor thus writes to the New York 

 Tribune: "As I rested in the shade, look- 

 ing up to the gray pinnacles, so foreshort- 

 ened by nearness that much of their ac- 

 tual height was lost, yet still indescriba- 

 bly huge, I could think of but one thing : 

 we must have a new Chronology of Man. 



There, before me, the Usher-Mosaic reck- 

 oning was not only antedated, but a pre- 

 vious growth, of long, uncertain duration, 

 was made evident. There, in stones scat- 

 tered about the Desert, were inscriptions 

 cut long before any tradition of Hebrew, 

 Sanscrit, Phoenician, or Greek — clear, intel- 

 ligible words, almost as legible to modern 

 scholarship as those of living languages. 

 This one long, unbroken stream of light 

 into the remote Past lights up darker his- 

 toric apparitions on all sides, and sweeps 

 us, with or without our will, to a new and 

 wonderful backward starting-point. Of 

 course, the learned in all countries are fa- 

 miliar with all our recently-acquired knowl- 

 edge on this point ; but is it not time to 

 make it the property of the people every- 

 where — to discard the unmanly fear that 

 one form of truth can ever harm any other 

 form — to reveal anew, through the grandeur 

 of Man's slow development, the unspeakable 

 grandeur of the Divine Soul by which it is 

 du-ected ? " 



Life in an Attenuated itmosphere. — 



M. Paul Bert, in a communication to the 

 French Academy, details some further ex- 

 periments made on himself, with reference 

 to the effect of changes of barometric press- 

 ure on life. He entered his large apparatus 

 of decompression, and the pressure was 

 brought down to 450 millimetres (somewhat 

 less than 1 8 inches of mercury) ; it was 

 then maintained between this and 408 

 millimetres (16^ inches) for a little over 

 an hour. These pressures correspond to 

 heights of 13,448 and 16,728 feet. At 450 

 millimetres the author began to experience 

 "mountain sickness" — a feeling of heavi- 

 ness and weakness, nausea, fatigue of sight, 

 general indifference, and laziness. Havmg 

 lifted his right leg, it was thrown into con- 

 vulsive trembling, which extended to the 

 left, and lasted some minutes. The face 

 was somewhat congested, and the tempera- 

 ture under the tongue increased. He also 

 remarks that he was unable to whistle. The 

 important point of these experiments, how- 

 ever, was this : he had taken with him a 

 small vessel full of oxygen, and, when the 

 pressure had reached 430 millimetres, he 

 inhaled some of it. His pulse, which had 

 risen from 62 to 84, immediately fell to 71, 



