28o 



NATURE 



[7 an. 17, 18S9 



The letter is dated December 2, 1888, from on board the 

 I'eninsular and Oriental s.s. Verona, while in the Inland 

 Sea on its voyage back from Japan to China. 



Mr. Vaughan Harley says that on October 20 last, 

 liaving procured the services of an interpreter, he started 

 by train from Yokohama to Tokio, where he obtained a 

 permit from the Japanese P'oreign Office to visit the Ban- 

 dai-san valhy. From Tokio he went by train to Kuragano, 

 where he engaged, for himself and interpreter, a couple of 

 jinrickshas, with two coolies for each. On the following 

 morning he started at 4.45 a.m., — that is to say, before 

 daylight. It being then early winter in Japan, the day 

 did not break till 6.45. The weather at the time was 

 both cold and rainy ; but so long as the roads were good, 

 the coolies, running tandem-fashion, managed to get 

 along at an average rate of from 6 to 7 miles an hour, 

 and accomplished 50 miles a day. On arriving at 

 Inawashiro Lake, after having engaged a guide, he 

 proceeded direct to Ban-dai-san, where the scene that 

 met his eyes, though magnificent, was truly awe-inspiring. 

 1 1 was a veritable valley of devastation. For the whole 

 side of a mountain— 3 miles in circumference — had been 

 completely blown away, and hurled as if it had been the 

 mere outside wall of a house, into the valley below, 

 -completely burying beneath it four villages and their 

 surrounding farms, along with all their inhabitants. 

 Such was the stupendous force of the explosion, that 

 the mere wind-shock produced by its concussion 

 knocked down, as if they had been nothing more than 

 ninepins, the whole of the trees growing on the opposite 

 mountain-side. The river in the valley, too, was so 

 dammed across by the huge mass of detached mountain 

 as to have formed itself into a small lake, the waters 

 of which now occupy the place where formerly well 

 cultivated crops grew. 



The catastrophe which brought about these physical 

 changes appears to have been due to the sudden explosion 

 of superheated pent-up steam, either alone or in con- 

 junction with volatile gase?, set free by the decomposing 

 ■chemical action of heat and water on the constituents of 

 the subjacent mineral strata. The whole surrounding 

 ground is at present full of hot springs, giving forth 

 volumes of steam, while from every crack and crevice in 

 the earth issues, either continuously or spasmodically, 

 clouds of hot watery vapour, so that one has to be very 

 careful where he places his feet. Not only the fact of the 

 presence of these hot springs, but likewise of the still 

 frequent occurrence of earthquakes, shows that the 

 same agent or agents that rent the mountain in twain 

 are still actively at work. Even in the morning of the 

 day following his visit (at 5 a.m.) there was a shock of 

 earthquake, which, although it was strong enough to 

 admit of his feeling the earth quiver beneath him, the 

 people spoke of as being such a mild one as to merit no 

 attention. He says, moreover, that the appearance pre- 

 sented by the standing half of the cleft mountain, with its 

 surrounding clouds of steam, was, to his way of thinking, 

 far grander, and vastly more awe-inspiring, than are either 

 the geysers of Iceland or the yet greater and more nume- 

 rous ones he had seen in the volcanic district of the 

 Yellowstone Park in North America. P^or here the scene 

 he witnessed not only plainly pointed to the cause, but 

 gave him ocular demonstration of its stupendous power, 

 and made him feel that, if superheated steam could thus 

 easily, apparently, rend asunder a solid mountain of rock, 

 there could be no difficulty in understanding why the 

 live volcanoes scattered over the globe were looked 

 upon as safety-valves for the effects of the various 

 chemical decompositions brought about by heat and 

 water in the molten minerals within the bowels 

 of the earth. For were there no outlets even to the 

 superheated steam— heated by the vast internal fires up 

 to a point when it possibly resolves itself into its elements 

 — he could readilj' enough imagine, from what he saw, 



that its sudden explosion might suffice to shatter the 

 earth's crust into fragments— just, perhaps, as takes place 

 in some of the heavenly bodies, fragments from which 

 ever and anon fall, in the shape of meteorites, upon the 

 surface of our globe. Having got back to the tea-house 

 at 7.15 p.m., leg-tired and foot-sore, but thoroughly 

 satisfied with all he had seen and learned, immediately 

 after a hot bath — a natural one, for there is no need of 

 artificially heating bath-water here. Nature does that 

 amply for them— and supper, he went to bed, the 

 bedstead being the floor, as is usual m Japan. Next 

 morning, he started on his return journey to Yokohama, 

 and arrived in good time for the sailing of the Verona on 

 the 25th for Hong Kong, where he immediately posted 

 his letter, in order to catch the homeward mail. 



NOTES. 

 The Vice- Chancellor of Cambridge University has appointed 

 Prof. Stokes, P.R.S., Rede Lecturer for the present year. 



Mr. Isaac Roberts, the eminent photographic astronomer, 

 has presented to Dunsink Observatory a photographic reflect- 

 ing telescope with a mirror by With of 15 inches aperture. The 

 generous donor is erecting the instrument at his own expense, 

 and it will be employed in furthering the study of star parallax 

 — a study with which Dunsink has been so long associated. 



On Thursday evening last, the first meeting of the Institution 

 of Electrical Engineers was held in the rooms of the Institution 

 of Civil Engineers, at George Street, Westminster. Mr. Edward 

 Graves, retiring President, occupied the chair. He opened the 

 proceedings by announcing that the last legal steps had been 

 taken to change the name of their body from " Society of Tele- 

 graph Engineers and Electricians," by which name it had 

 hitherto been known, to "Institution of Electrical Engineers." Sir 

 William Thomson, President for the year, then delivered his in- 

 augural address on "Ether, bllectricity, and Ponderable Matter." 

 The forty-.'^econd annual general meeting .of the Institution 

 of Mechanical Engineers will be held on Wednesday, January 

 30, Thursday, January 31, and Friday, February i, at 25 Great 

 George Street, Westminster, by permission of the Council of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers. The chair will be taken by the 

 President at 7.30 p.m. on each evening. The President, Mr. 

 Edward H. Carbutt, having been in office for two years, will 

 retire, and will induct into the chair the President-elect, Mr. 

 Charles CochraiiC. 



The annual general meeting of the Anthropological Institute 

 of Great Britain and Ireland will be held on Tuesday, the 22nd 

 inst., at half-past eight o'clock p.m. Mr. Francis Galton, 

 F. R.S., will take the chair, and deliver the Presidential address. 

 At a meeting of the Council of the Sanitary Institute on 

 January 9, Mr. G. J. Symons, F. R.S., in the chair, it was 

 decided that two courses of twelve lectures for sanitary officers 

 should be held, the first course to begin in March, the second in 

 October. 



At the Central Institution, Exhibition Road, during the 

 spring term, Prof. Armstrong will give about ten lectures on 

 some of the more important current problems in chemistry, on 

 Mondays, at 4.30 p.m., commencing Monday, January 2I. The 

 following subjects will be dealt with as far as time permits: 

 the nature of chemical change ; the interdependence of chemical 

 change and electrolysis ; the molecular composition of gases, 

 liquids, and solids ; the nature of solutions ; physical constants ; 

 lavvs of substitution and isomeric change as bearing on the prob- 

 lem of the nature of chemical change ; valency ; geometrical 

 isomerism and allo-isomerism. 



Zoologists will regret to hear of the death of Dr. Heinrich 

 Alexander Pagenslecher. His " Allgemeine Zoologie," in four 

 volumes, the first of which appeared in 1875, the last in 18S1, 



