466 



NATURE 



{Sept. 



dressings applied many years ago as affected and brought 

 out by continuous dressings of nitrogenous manures is 

 another significant fact ; while the evanescent effect of 

 nitrates applied as salts contrasts unfavourably with the 

 continued effects of nitrogenous matter in organic com- 

 bination with carbon. Prof. Fream's book is a sub- 

 stantial addition to agricultural literature, and it is satis- 

 factory to find that the editing of such important results 

 has been carried out, with the " kind and ready " assistance 

 of Sir John Lawes and Dr. Gilbert, by one who brings 

 sound scientific attainments to bear upon a stupendous 

 number of observations made during a series of forty 

 years. There is room for a second, if not a third volume, 

 as the experiments upon the cultivation of the root crops, 

 the leguminous crops, and the elaborate researches made 

 at Rothamsted upon the fattening of animals, are not 

 touched in this first instalment. 



THE JAPANESE VOLCANIC ERUPTION. 



THE Times of Tuesday contains a long letter from its 

 Japan Correspondent describing the scene of the 

 recent volcanic explosion in the Bandai-san region in 

 Northern Japan. This is the first account by a foreign 

 eye-witness that has reached the outside world. The writer 

 appears to have started immediately from Tokio for the 

 scene of the disaster, where he spent four days going care- 

 fully over the ground, examining the phenomena connected 

 with the outburst, and hearing the stories of the survivors. 

 The communication which is the result of these investiga- 

 tions, and which was evidently written while the 

 powerful impression left by the scene of awful desolation 

 was still fresh in the writer's mind, is probably one of the 

 most graphic and detailed accounts of the immediate 

 results of a stupendous volcanic explosion that has ever 

 been published. Bandai-san is a mountain about 5800 feet 

 high, and has shown no sign of activity for about eleven 

 hundred years. On its north-eastern flank was a sub- 

 ordinate peak known as Little Bandai-san, which rose 

 directly above a group of three solfataras. 



At about 8 o'clock on the morning of July 15 (here, as 

 throughout almost the whole of this article, we quote the 

 Times Correspondent), almost in the twinkling of an eye, 

 Little Bandai-san was blown into the air and wiped out of 

 the map of Japan. A few minutes later its debris had 

 buried or devastated an area about half the size of 

 London. A dozen or more of upland hamlets had been 

 overwhelmed in the earthen deluge, or wrecked by other 

 phenomena attending the outburst. Several hundreds of 

 people had met with sudden and terrible death. Scores 

 of others had been injured ; and the long roll of disaster 

 included the destruction of horses and cattle, damming up 

 of rivers, and laying waste of large tracts of rice-land and 

 mulberry-groves. A small party was organized in Tokio 

 to visit the scene. As the travellers approached the 

 mountain, they were told that twenty miles in a 

 straight line from Bandai-san no noise or earth- 

 quake was experienced on the 15th, but mist and 

 gloom prevailed for about seven hours, the result of a 

 shower of impalpable blue-gray ash, which fell to a depth 

 of half an inch, and sorely puzzled the inhabitants. An 

 ascent of about 3000 feet was made to the back of the 

 newly-formed crater, so as to obtain a clear view of it and 

 of the country which had been overwhelmed. Only on 

 nearing the end of the ascent were they again brought 

 face to face with signs of the explosion. Here, besides 

 the rain of fine gray ashen mud which had fallen on and 

 still covered the ground and all vegetation, they came upon 

 a number of freshly-opened pits, evidently in some way the 

 work of the volcano. Ascending the last steep rise to the 

 ridge behind Little Bandai-san, signs of the great disaster 



grew in number and intensity. " Foetid vapours swepl 

 over us, emanating from evil-looking pools. Great tree; 

 torn up by their roots lay all around ; and the whole face 

 of the mountain wore the look of having been withered by 

 some fierce and baleful blast. A few minutes further anc 

 we had gained the crest of the narrow ridge, and now, foi 

 the first time, looked forth upon the sight we had cometc 

 see. I hardly know which to pronounce the mon 

 astonishing, the prospect that now opened before oui 

 eyes or the suddenness with which it burst upon us. Tc 

 the former, perhaps, no more fitting phrase can be appliec 

 than that of absolute, unredeemed desolation — so intense 

 so sad, and so bewildering, that I despair of describing i 

 adequately in detail. On our right, a little above us, rose 

 the in-curved rear wall of what, eight days before, hac 

 been Sho-Bandai-san, a ragged, almost sheer, cliff, falling 

 with scarce a break, to a depth of fully 600 feet. In fron 

 of this cliff everything had been blown away and scatterec 

 over the face of the country before it in a roughly fan 

 shaped deposit of for the most part unknown depth- 

 deep enough, however, to erase every landmark and con 

 ceal every feature of the deluged area. At the foot of th< 

 cliff, clouds of suffocating steam rose ceaselessly anc 

 angrily, and with loud roaring, from two great fissures ir 

 the crater bed, and now and then assailed us with theii 

 hellish odour. To our eyes, the base denuded by the 

 explosion seemed to cover a space of between three anc 

 four square miles. This, however, can only be rougr 

 conjecture. Equally vague must be all present attempt; 

 to determine the volume of the disrupted matter. Yet, i 

 we assume, as a very moderate calculation, that the mear 

 depth of the debris covering the buried area of thirty 

 square miles is not less than 15 feet, we find that the 

 work achieved by this last great mine of Nature's firing 

 was the upheaval and wide distribution of no fewer thai: 

 700,000,000 tons of earth, rocks, and other ponderous 

 material. The real figure is probably very much greater.' 



The desolation beyond the crater, and the mighty mass 

 thrown out by the volcano which covered the earth were 

 almost incredible. " Down the slopes of Bandai-san, across 

 the valley of the Nakasegawa, choking up the river, and 

 stretching beyond it to the foot-hills five or six miles away. 

 spread a vast billowy sheet of ash-covered earth or mud. 

 obliterating every foot of the erstwhile smiling landscape. 

 Here and there its surface was dotted or streaked with 

 water. Elsewhere the eye rested on huge disordered 

 heaps of rocky debris, in the distance resembling nothing 

 so much as the giant concrete block substructure of 

 some modern breakwater. It was curious to see on the 

 farther side the sharp line of demarcation between the 

 brown sea of mud and the green forests on which it had 

 encroached ; or, again, the lakes formed in every 

 tributary glen of the Nakasegawa by the massive dams 

 so suddenly raised against the passage of their stream 

 waters. One lake was conspicuous among the rest. It 

 was there that the Nakasegawa itself had been arrested at ; 

 its issue from a. narrow pass by a monster barrier of dis- 

 rupted matter thrown right across its course. Neither; 

 living thing nor any sign of life could be descried over the; 

 whole expanse. All was dismally silent and solitary. 

 Beneath it, however, lay half a score of hamlets, and 

 hundreds of corpses of men, women, and children, who 

 had been overtaken by swift and painful deaths." 



Near by two houses, built for the accommodation of 

 visitors to the hot springs were overwhelmed, and a, 

 little lower down two spa-hamlets were absolutely buried 

 in mud. From various indications, especially a com- i 

 parison of the places destroyed with those saved, it; 

 appears that the disruptive force must, in the main, have 

 been directed outwards from the hill-face at a consider- 

 able inclination to the vertical. On no other hypothesis 

 is it possible to account for some of the most startling 

 phenomena, for the great distances reached by the waves 

 oi'jtjectamenta, and for the incredibly brief intervals that 





