324 



NATURE 



[Fed. 25, 1875 



winking like planets, or twinkling like stars ; rows of 

 little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the 

 crater ; fire molten in deep cm'asscs ; fire in wavy lines ; 

 fire, calm, stationary, and restful : an incandescent lake 

 two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, 

 and whose depth one dare not fathom even in thought. 

 Broad in the glare, giving light enough to read by at a 

 distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the moon 

 look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam 

 changed to a vivid rose-colour, lighting up the whole of 

 the vast precipices of that part of the crater with a rosy 

 red, bringing out every detail here, throwing cliffs and 

 heights into huge black masses there, rising, falling, 

 never intermitting, leaping in lofty jets with glorious 

 shapes like wheatsheafs, corruscating, reddening, the 

 most glorious thing beneath the moon was the fire- 

 fountain of Mokuaweovveo." 



On the east flank of Mauna Loa, about 4,000 feet in 

 height, is the crater of Kiiauea, which. Miss Bird says, 

 has the appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain. 



"But such a pit ! It is nine miles in circumference, 

 and its lowest area, which not long ago fell about 300 

 feet, just as ice on a pond falls when the water below it is 

 withdrawn, covers six square miles. The depth of the 

 crater varies from 800 to 1,100 feet in different years, 

 according as the molten sea below is at flood or ebb." 



We wish we had space to quote Miss Bird's fearfully 

 vivid description of what she saw during the two visits 

 she made to Kiiauea, descriptions which, were they not 

 evidently written on the spot with a truthful pen, would 

 almost deserve to be called sensational. 



She also made the ascent of Mauna Kea, to the north 

 of Mauna Loa, the highest peak in Oceania, perpetually 

 covered with snow, a dead volcano, whose top consists of 

 deep soft ashes and sand. 



On the west side of Hawaii is another e.xtinct volcano, 

 Hualulai, 10,000 feet high, which has only slept since 

 1 80 1, when there was a tremendous eruption from it, 

 which flooded several villages, destroyed many planta- 

 tions and fish-ponds, filled up a deep bay twenty miles 

 in e,\tent, and formed the present coast. 



The largest extinct volcano in the world, Haleakala, is 

 in the centre of the island of Mauai, lying to the north- 

 west of Hawaii. It is 10,200 feet in height ; its terminal 

 crater is nineteen miles in circumference, 2,000 feet deep, 

 and contains numerous subsidiary cones, some of which 

 are 800 feet high. Miss Bird of course visited it, and, 

 as usual, her description is exceedingly graphic and 

 full, and is considerably helped out by an excellent map 

 of the crater. It seems that very few of the usual vol- 

 canic products are present in this extinct crater.* 



Volcanic action in the Sandwich Islands would seem to 

 have died out from west to east ; this is inferred from the 

 state of the lava and the great depth of soil in some of the 

 western islands, as in Oahu and Kauai, the latter the 

 most westerly of the inhabited islands. Some very re- 

 markable instances of the powerful effects of weathering 

 in causing degradation are to be seen in this island. The 

 Punchbowl, a crater behind Honolulu, was in 1786 

 observed to be composed of high peaks ; but atmospheric 

 influences have reduced it to the appearance of a single 

 wasting tufa cone ; and the cone of Diamond Hill, to the 



* According to Mr. Brigh.^m, the products of the H.iwaiian volcanoes are 

 native sulphur, pyrites, salt, sal ammoniac, hydrochloric acid, hematite, sul- 

 phurous acid, sulphuric acid, quartz, crystals, palagonite, feldspar, chryso- 

 lite, Thompsonite, gypsum, solfatarite, copperas, nitre, arragonite, Labra- 

 dorite, limonite. 



south of the town, is also, from the same causes, rapidly 

 diminishing. 



The native population of the Sandwich Islands, which 

 belongs to the Malay or Malyo-Polynesian division of 

 Oceania, is fast dying out, at the fearful rate of something 

 ]i;e 1,000 per year ; so that unless some counteracting cii'- 

 cumstances intervene, it mu;t in a very few years become 

 entirely extinct. Cook calculated the population of the 

 islands in 177 8 to be about 400,000; now the native 

 population is under 50,000. That the decay is to a con- 

 siderable extent owing to contact with whites there is no 

 doubt. 



But when every allowance is made for the effects of such 

 contact upon the native population, it is questionable 

 whether this will account completely for its rapid decrease. 

 A similar decrease seems to be going on all over the 

 Pacific islands, even in places where the whites have 

 always been extremely few. From this point of view M. 

 Leborgne has recently turned his attention to the small 

 Gambler group, which consists of four islands. Magardva, 

 the most important island, had in 1840 a population of 

 1,130 ; it is now only 650. Dr. Hamy, in an article in La 

 Nature, ascribes the prevalent diseases mainly to consan- 

 guineous marriages, a cause which is likely to obtain in 

 many of the other isolated Pacific groups. This may 

 have something to do with the diminution of the Hawaiian 

 population, as also the fact that the careless, happy, 

 and extremely sociable people seem to be almost devoid of 

 anything like parental affection, taking little care of their 

 children, and readily parting with them to anyone willing 

 to take them ; the consequence is that a large proportion 

 die in infancy. Another point to be noted is that in 1872 

 the males exceeded the females by 6,400 souls. 



At all events there is no doubt that the populations of 

 most of the Pacific islands are rapidly disappearing, and 

 that ere very, long the only tenant of their lovely homes 

 will be the omnipresent white man, who has foisted on 

 them an exotic civilisation which seems to have un- 

 manned them, to have completely checked their natural 

 development, and whose invariable concomitants have 

 been disease and widespread destruction. 



We again recommend Miss Bird's most attractive book 

 to the favourable notice of our readers. A small map 

 of the islands is prefixed, and the few illustrations are 

 beautifully executed. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Sun and Earth as Great Forces in Chemistry. By Thos. 

 W. Hall, M.D. (London ; TrUbner and Co.) 



The author of this work, professing himself the preacher 

 of a new doctrine, theorises, to use his own words, "on 

 the phenomena of chemistry . . . considering the whole 

 of chemistry as but heat acting on matter." The sun is 

 considered to exert some subtle chemical influence on 

 matter, but, unfortunately for science, these effects, we 

 are told, cannot be studied experimentally, "yet we can 

 do so theoretically to a very useful extent." After care- 

 fully perusing the twelve chapters in which this eminently 

 theoretical treatment is carried out, we are driven to ask 

 ourselves whether Dr. Hall's views are not more of the 

 nature of complication than of explanation. It may be 

 safely affirmed that the phenomena of chemistry are far 

 more easily explained by existing theories — imperfect 

 though they be — than by the obscure reasoning based on 

 perfectly gratuitous assumptions in which the present 



