CVin NOTES. 



C 42 *) p. 287. Junghuhn, Bd. ii. S. 309 and 314. The fiery stripes which 

 were seen on G. Merapi were formed by streams of glowing scoriae (" traine'es de 

 fragmens "), disconnected masses, which being erupted roll down on the same 

 side, and being of very different weights, overtake and strike against each other 

 in their rapid passage down the abrupt descent. In the eruption of G. Lamon- 

 gan, on the 26th of March 1847, such a stream divided into two branches some 

 hundred feet below its origin. Junghuhn says expressly (Bd. ii. S. 767), that 

 the fiery streaks consisted not of true molten lava, bat of crowded fragments 

 rolling down after each other. G. Lamongan and G. Semeru (the first, 5340, 

 and the second, 12,235 feet high) are, among the volcanoes of Java, those which, 

 by their activity during long periods, most nearly resemble Stromboli, which is 

 scarcely 2960 feet high. The ejections of scorise occurred in G. Lamongan (in 

 the eruptions of July 1838 and March 1847) after pauses of fifteen or twenty 

 minutes ; and in G. Semeru (in the eruptions of August 1836 and September 

 1844) after pauses of from one and a half to three hours. (Bd. ii. S. 554 and 

 765 769.) In Stromboli itself, besides numerous eruptions of scorise, there 

 are small and rare outpourings of lava which, being detained by obstacles, some- 

 times become hardened on the slope of the cone. I attach great importance to 

 the different forms of continuity (as in lavas) or of disconnection (as in detached 

 scoriae) of the wholly or half fused materials which are ejected or poured out, 

 either from the same or from different volcanoes. Analogous researches, con- 

 ducted under the guidance of " leading ideas" in various regions of the globe, 

 are much to be desired, in order to remedy the partial views which arise from 

 the contemplation being limited to the four European active volcanoes. The 

 question proposed by myself in 1802, and by my friend Boussingault in 1831, 

 whether the Volcano Antisana, in the Cordillera of Quito, had sent forth streams 

 of lava, which will be further touched upon, may perhaps find its solution in 

 peculiarities to which fluid lava streams are subject. The essential character 

 of a stream of lava is that of a uniform connected fluid, a band-like current, 

 from which, as it cools and solidifies, scales detach themselves at the surface. 

 These scales, beneath which the almost homogeneous lava long continues to 

 flow, become pushed up, either obliquely or vertically, by the inequality of the 

 internal movement and by the development of hot gases ; and thus, when 

 several lava streams have flowed together into a kind of lava lake, as in Iceland, 

 there is produced, after cooling, a " field of fragments." The Spaniards, espe- 

 cially, in Mexico, call such spaces, which are very inconvenient to pass over, 

 " Malpais." Such fields of lava fragments, which are often met with on the 

 plain at the foot of a volcano, remind us of a lake of which the frozen surface 

 has been broken up into blocks of ice. 



