White.] 230 



dred feet in diameter, and the lava thirty or forty feet below 

 the brink. At the time of his visit to the summit crater of 

 Mauna Loa, there was no action, excepting in a few steam 

 cracks. He pointed out the direction of the streams of lava 

 which have issued from the sides of Mauna Loa since 1840, 

 and spoke more especially of the one of 1859, which ran 

 about fifty miles in nine days, before entering the sea. The 

 channels through which the lava ran in this stream were, 

 in places, at least seventy-five feet deep and ofi^en arched 

 over. It was a question whether the whole stream was of 

 this depth at any one time or if the lava had melted its chan- 

 nel part way into underlying beds of rock. He si3oke of the 

 aspect of Hualalai, which is covered with great numbers 

 of small cones, each containing one or more pit craters. 

 There is a singular " blow hole " on the summit of this moun- 

 tain, of only about twenty-five feet in diameter, with more than 

 a thousand feet of perpendicular depth, its cone being com- 

 posed of the loose fragments of lava ejected in a viscid condi- 

 tion and thus adhering slightly when falhng together. The 

 inside of the shaft does not seem to be made of regular 

 blocks as is usually the case, but is as smooth as if plastered 

 over or turned out of plastic matter, showing, perhaps mo- 

 tion of the gases and other matters upon their axis on being 

 ejected. 



Dr. White drew attention to the remarkable difierences 

 presented by the teeth of the crania from the Hawaiian Is- 

 lands, as compared with the dentition of the California Digger 

 Indians, observed in the skulls presented by Dr. Thayer this 

 evening. In the latter the crown of the teeth formed flat 

 grinding surfaces, while in the teeth of the Sandwich Island- 

 ers the cusps were very perfect and the incisors and canines 

 unusually large. He also noticed evidences of diseased 

 action in several of the vertebrae belonging to one of the 

 skeletons. 



Mr. Mann referred to an article of food used by the Indians 

 of the Yo Semite valley, consisting of the larva of a fly 

 abounding in Lake Mono. 



Prof H. Y. Hind of Toronto, Canada, was elected a Cor- 

 responding member, and the following gentlemen Resident 



