592 COSMOS. 



summit abound in felspar. The extraordinary fluidity of 

 the lavas of Mouna Loa, whether issuing from the summit- 

 crater (Mokna-weo-weo) or from the sea of lava (on the 

 eastern declivity of the volcano, at a height of only 3969 feet 

 above the sea), is testified by the glass threads, sometimes 

 smooth and sometimes crisped or curled, which are dispersed 

 by the wind all over the island. This hair glass, which is 

 likewise thrown out by the volcano of Bourbon, is called 

 Pele's hair by the Hawaiians, after the tutelary goddess of 

 the countiy. 



Dana has ably demonstrated that Mouna Loa is not the 

 central volcano of the Sandwich Islands, and that Kilauea is 

 not a solfatara. 88 The basin of Kilauea is 16,000 feet (about 

 2-| geographical miles) across its long diameter, and 7460 

 feet across its shorter one. The steaming, bubbling, and 

 foaming mass which forms the true lava-pool does not, 

 however, under ordinary circumstances, fill the whole of 

 this cavity, but merely a space whose long diameter mea- 

 sures 14,000 feet and its breadth 5000 feet. The descent to 

 the edge of the crater is gi"aduated. This great phenomenon 

 produces a wonderful impression of silence and solemn re- 

 pose. The approach of an eruption is not here indicated 

 by earthquakes or subterranean noises, but merely by a 

 sudden rising and falling of the surface of the lava, some- 

 times to the extent of from 300 or 400 feet up to the 

 complete filling of the whole basin. If, disregarding the 

 immense difference in size, we were to compare the gigantic 

 basin of Kilauea with the small side-craters, (first described 

 by Spallanzani), on the declivity of Stromboli at four-fifths 

 of the height of the mountain, the summit of which has 



extinct volcano of Hale-a-Kala or the House of the Sun on the island 

 of Mani). See pp. 179 and 199200. 



88 Dana, p. 205. "The term Solfatara is wholly misapplied. A 

 solfatara is an area with steairing fissures and escaping sulphur vapours, 

 and without proper lava ejections ; while Kilauea is a vast crater with 

 extensive lava ejections and no sulphur, except that of the sulphur 

 banks, beyond what necessarily accompanies, as at Vesuvius, violent 

 volcanic action." The structural frame of Kilauea, the mass of the 

 great lava-basin, consists also, not of beds of ashes or fragmentary 

 rocks, but of horizontal layers of lava, arranged like lime-stone. Dana, 

 p. 193. (Compare Strzelecki, Phys. Descr. of New South Wales, 1845, 

 p. 105-111). 



