4 
13 
2 
when it fell, and which points to the ashes having been accom- 
panied by an invisible cloud of sulphur dioxide on their emission 
from the crater, so that they mechanically occluded some of 
thegas. Theash gave no effervescence with a powerful acid, the 
action of the acid being closely watched under the microscope,' 
so that carbonates, such as limestone, andammonium carbonate 
seem entirely absent. 
wind will have been already noticed. This was due, one would 
naturally suppose, to the existence of a contrary upper current 
of air into which the ashes were projected, as they were, indeed, 
in the great eruption of 1812, when, in spite of the N.E. wind 
blowing strongly at the time, the ashes fell on the Azores, some 
hundreds of miles eastward of La Soufriere of St. Vincent. 
Eton, Bucks, May 27. T. C. PORTER. 
III. 
The dust from the Soufriére, which fell in Barbados on May 
NATURE 
Finally, the drift of tne ash against the | 
7 and 8, appears to be composed of fragments of glassy and | 
pumiceous lava, broken crystals of plagioclase’ felspar, augite 
and hypersthene, much magnetite, often in perfect octahedra, 
and a very few crystals of brown hornblende. The felspars 
range in specific gravity from labradorite to anorthite. Hyper- 
sthene is the predominating coloured silicate. 
Dust from the eruption of 1812 also collected in Barbados is 
of much finer grain, but evidently composed of the same 
minerals with the green augite in smaller proportion. 
The magma appears to have been of the nature of hypersthene- 
andesite, a rock exceedingly common among the recent lavas of 
American volcanoes. Further, the magma seems to have 
remained practically unchanged in composition during the 
Soufriere’s ninety years of dormancy. 
University of Edinburgh. J. D. FALCONER. 
RECORDS OF RECENT ERUPTIONS. 
jR Soe accounts which have been published during 
the past week, some additional details referring 
to the character and effects of the recent volcanic erup- 
tions in the West Indies have become available and are | 
here brought together. 
A letter from Mr. A. D. Whatman, one of the mem- 
bers of the Government relief expedition to Martinique, 
describes some of the events as related to him by one 
of the survivors of the steamship Rorazma, which was 
about 150 yards from the shore when the catastrophe 
occurred at St. Pierre. It appears that a little before 
8 a.m. on May 8 an explosion was heard, and imme- 
diately the whole place was in darkness. At the same 
moment white-hot sand began to fall, which penetrated | 
everywhere like snow, and immediately killed everyone 
on deck. After about an hour anda half the fall of 
white-hot ash stopped. 
Referring to the condition of St. Pierre when he visited 
it, Mr. Whatman says :— 
There was no lava thrown out; nothing but this fine sand, 
which was evidently white hot. Judging from what the few 
saved said and from what I myself saw and could judge from 
the position of the bodies, I have little doubt that everyone who 
was not under cover at the time the sand began to fall was killed 
in less than two minutes. The rest must have survived for a 
very short time longer, as they must have been quickly suffo- 
cated by the heat from the falling sand, not to mention the fact 
that the whole town must have caught fire at the same moment. 
A tremendous blast of air must have crossed from north to south, 
as all trees have been uprooted, and their remains are all point- 
ing with roots towards the volcano. The lighthouse also fell 
in the same direction. 
A message from the Acting Governor of Martinique | 
states that from the further exploration of St. Pierre it 
would seem as if the southern portion of the town 
was destroyed by an as yet unexplained phenomenon, 
which acted with lightning-like rapidity, and has left 
traces as of a violent storm sweeping from north to 
south. The rain of ash which preceded, accompanied 
1 One opaque crystal only seemed to evolve a slow stream of bubbles, as 
if they came from a cavity in it. Whatever the gas was it dissolved in the 
liquid very rapidly, the bubbles visibly diminishing almost to nothing in 
ascending through the very shallow stratum of liquid above the crystal. 
NO. 1701, VOL, 66)| 
_of five miles from Mont Pelée. 
_ of Norway, has sent us the following description of the 
[JUNE 5, 1902 
and followed this phenomenon covered the surface of 
the land to a depth of between twenty-five and thirty 
centimetres. The northern part of St. Pierre is buried 
beneath a mass of mud. 
From the Oéserver we learn that the Deputy-Mayor of 
St. Martinique, who left St. Pierre just fifty minutes 
before the catastrophe took place, and was a witness o} 
all the circumstances which led up to it, has given a new 
account of the condition of the volcano before the erup- 
tion. He says that shortly before St. Pierre was over- 
whelmed, immense ‘fissures, caused by the earthquake, 
appeared in the side of Mont Pelée, reaching down to 
the edge of the sea. Into these the sea water rushed, 
and it was the contact between the water and the burning 
lava from the voleano which caused Mont Pelee practi- 
cally to blow up like an overheated boiler. 
The Standard records some observations made b 
Prof. R.- T. Hill, a member of the United States 
Geological Survey, who went with Prof. Heilprin to 
Martinique to observe the volcanic phenomena and 
effects. Prof. Hill made his observations at a distance 
On May 26 he observed 
what is usually described as lightning playing through 
the mushroom-shaped cloud overhead, like a sheet cover- 
ing the country up to ten miles from the crater. Thes 
flashes occurred with alarming frequency, and they 
followed distinctly horizontal paths, hence they are 
\N i$ 
\ 
aC: S| A 
S32 WN phages 
= Gy — 
YW, 
Fic. 1. 
believed to be effects produced by the explosive com- 
bustion of gases leaving the Mont Pelée crater. 
Mr. G. Kennan, who reached the new crater near 
Ajoupabouillon, at the head of the river Falaise, which is 
boiling hot, reports that a large section of the side of 
Mont Pelée has fallen, leaving a huge perpendicular cliff, 
in which there are five immense tunnels or cavities. 
Dr. Hans Reusch, director of the Geological Survey 
crater of the Soufriére of St. Vincent as he found it in 
1892 :— 
During a visit to the West Indies in 1892 I ascended the 
voleano now so much spoken of on the northern end of 
St. Vincent. When I was at the top I drew the accompanying 
bird’s eye view from the south (Fig. 1). 
It may be of some interest to compare this with the changes: 
which undoubtedly have taken place during the recent eruptions. 
The crater numbered 1 is the remnant of an old very wide 
crater—some kind of Monte Somma (of Vesuvius). The height 
is given on the maps as 4043 feet above the sea. No. 
is ‘the big crater,” the breadth of which I estimated to 
be 1 kilometre. The bottom is filled with a lake of bluish- 
green opaque water, the colour being due to sulphur in fine 
powder. I calculated the vertical distance from the lake to 
the lowest point of the brim to be about 150 metres. The 
dip of the inner sides of the crater was about 60°. The slopes 
were mostly covered with bushes, but a stratification of the tufa 
was marked by horizontal lines. The small crater, No. 3, is about 
half as large as the other one, but comparatively deep. The 
stratification of its sides is inclined at about 20° in a northerly 
direction. It isa ‘‘steam hole”’ blown out somewhat to the 
side of the chief place of eruption. On the bottom lies a little 
pond of clear water, the rest of the bottom being covered with 
loose material washed down from the sides of the crater. The 
only sign of volcanic activity was a little smoke now and then 
