150 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



THE KRAKATOA ERUPTION. 



PROF. LOUIS G. CARPENTER. 



Agricultural College, Lansing, Mich., June 17, 1884. 



Editor Review. — Inclosed I send a small quantity of ashes from the [cele- 

 brated Krakatoa eruption near Java last August. These were^received through 

 an acquaintance, of this State, who received them directly from a visiting friend, 

 a sailor, who was on board the Karnek, at the time, near the Strait of Sunda. 



The following is the account of the sailor, Mr. Becker, as repeated to me : 

 "They were about two hundred miles from the island, sailing toward it, when 

 about 10:30 A. M. they heard the tremendous report, and at about 3 o'clock 

 these ashes began to fall, coming thicker and thicker until 4 o'clock the next 

 morning. At 5 o'clock when they were falling the fastest, he could not see his 

 hand before him. The deck of the ship was covered eighteen inches deep. 

 They passed through the Strait of Sunda, the ship plowing through dead bodies 

 as upon a great battle-field. Where the city of Anjer had stood with about 9,000 

 inhabitants, when they came there, there were fifteen fathoms of water standing 

 over it and only two men had escaped alive, one an European minister, and the 

 other a native. One-half of the island is sunk, and many small islands have 

 arisen." 



This corroborates the many accounts in the European magazines. But the 

 feature of special interest in this account is the explosion, and the time of hear- 

 ing it. If the report was " tremendous" at a distance of 200 miles it is not dif- 

 ficult to believe the account, which the great barometric disturbances do not ren- 

 der improbable, of those at much greater distances. If the time of hearing the 

 explosion was local time then the explosion itself must have taken place at about 

 loh. I cm. local time, which closely agrees with the results reached by Gen. 

 Strachey from the air-wave, and by Maj. Baird from the tidal-waves, the former 

 giving ph. 24m, and the latter loh. 30m. as the time of the explosion. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



The Academy of Science met June 8th, President Fulton in the chair. The 

 minutes of the last meeting were read and approved. 



F. A. Mann, editor of the Halifax y^«r«a/, at Daytona, Florida, who is also 

 a member of the Academy, sent the following contributions to the cabinet : 



1. Some shells taken from the subsoil of the "mammocks," or low, rich 

 lands, formed by the action of the sea along the cast coast of Florida. 



2. Specimens of what is usually called "tree-coal," taken from a depth of 

 two feet below the surface of the " mammocks," along the eastern coast of Florida. 



3. A specimen of " coralline limestone," taken from an artesian well- at a 



