I70 



THE MUSEUM. 



such a twig into the pocket of his 

 blouse far away back in that distant 

 world where the soil was cool and 

 green things grew, long before you 

 came into this place of torments, this 

 imbo and Gehena and place of burn- 

 ings. Well, what if he did.' If you 

 were a Hawaiian and no longer ago 

 than in your grandfather's time, even 

 in your own father's boyhood, this 

 Pele was a goddess capable of much 

 harm unless properly placated, you 

 might yourself somehow feel it best to 

 be on the safe side and toss over your 

 own little sprig of ohelo. Of course 

 such a demon as Pele could impress 

 only wild savages, but it is not the 

 Hawaiians who hold ideas about spilt 

 salt and broken mirrors and that sort 

 of thing. 



Guide Albert and Peter Lee and all 

 who know the crater tell of its three 

 conditions. It is most commonly 

 quiescent, which means that the lava 

 level in the Halema'uma'u is at a 

 standstill and that much of it is scum- 

 med over with a dark slag; one or 

 more open places show the incandes ■ 

 cence, and these spots are known as 

 the lakes of fire. When from these 

 lakes arise fountain jets and sprays of 

 fluid lava and the crater is boiling it 

 is said te be active. A greater stage 

 of activity is when the Halema'uma'u 

 fills and boils over and the lava runs 

 out upon the crater floor of Kilauea; 

 that is an eruption All these are 

 various stages of magnificent displays 

 of fire, the despair alike of brush and 

 pen to describe. 



But there is another and a differ- 

 ent stage of the active crater which 

 is very rare indeed, and attracts all 

 those who can reach the spot in time. 

 That is when some physics of the 

 earth's forces causes all the pitful of 

 melted and flaming metal to be suck- 

 ed back into the globe which has been 

 striving to shoot it forth. Such a 

 thiug happens only at rare intervals. 

 They say that when it happens it is a 

 sure sign that there will be an out- 

 burst of activity at the Mokuaweoweo 



crater on the distant summit of the 

 mountain up among the snows. This 

 year's eruption of that pit of fire was 

 preceded by an emptying of Halema'- 

 uma'u in the Kilauea crater. 



Of course the mathematician was 

 at work. He was happy at the chance 

 to triangulate the downward abyss 

 and to announce that the bottom of 

 the pit of which the swirling vapors 

 gave now and then a glimpse was 947 

 feet below the hot rock on which we 

 stood. But it was not the number of 

 feet which took the breath. It was 

 the general stupendousness of it all; 

 the collossal scale of nature's opera- 

 tions; the littleness of the spectators 

 perched in fear upon a rock. Once it 

 was possible to see through the heat 

 and the smother to the floor of the 

 pit itself and the mouth of the chute 

 through which the lava is fed from 

 furnaces below. 



And then you go back to the corral 

 and mount the wailing horse, for Al- 

 bert does know how, and back you go 

 to the Volcano House to eat more 

 bowls of ohelo berries with cream and 

 sugar. 



Butterflies Worth Collecting- 



The first portion of the well-known 

 collection of British butterflies and 

 moths formed by the late William 

 Machin, who was a compositor in a 

 London printing firm, was sold by auc- 

 tion on February 26th, at the rooms 

 of Mr. J. C. Stevens, King street, 

 Covent Garden, London. The collec- 

 tion, formed during a period of fifty- 

 eight years, was chiefly rich in a long 

 series of rare and now extinct British 

 species. The specmitns were thor- 

 oughly authenticated as British, and 

 as there was a large attendance of 

 buyers, the prices generally were high- 

 er than the usual average, varieties 

 especially fetching high rates. Among 

 the earlier lots of butterflies, four spec- 

 imens of Picris daplidicc, taken in 

 Kent, reached i6.f. to \2,s. each. A 

 bred variety of Argynnis pap/tia, with 



