THE FORESTRY WORK OF THE TENTH CENSUS. 451 



WHAT VOLCANOES ARE NOT. 



" What is a volcano?" This is a famiUar question, often addressed to us in 

 our youth, which "Catechisms of Universal Knowledge " and similar school 

 manuals have taught us to reply to in some such terms as the following: "A 

 volcano is a burning mountain, from the summit of which issue smoke and 

 flames." This description, says Professor Judd, is not merely incomplete and 

 inadequate as a whole, but each individual proposition of which it is made up is 

 grossly inadequate and, what is worse, perversely misleading. In the first place, 

 the action which takes place at volcanoes is not "burning," or combustion, and 

 bears, indeed, no relation whatever to that well-known process. Nor are vol- 

 canoes necessarily "mountains" at all; essentially they are just the reverse — 

 namely, holes in the earth's crust, or outer portion, by means of which a com- 

 munication is kept up between the surface and the interior of our globe. When 

 mountains do exist at centers of volcanic activity, they are simply the heaps of 

 materials thrown out of these holes, and must, therefore, be regarded not as the 

 causes but as the consequences of volcanic action. Neither does this action al- 

 ways take place at the "summits" of volcanic mountains when such exist, for 

 eruptions occur quite as frequently on their sides or at their base. That, too, 

 which popular fancy regards as "smoke" is really condensing steam or watery 

 vapor, and the supposed raging "flames" are nothing more than the glowing 

 light of a mass of molten material reflected from these vapor clouds. 



The name of volcano has been borrowed from the mountain Vulcano, in the 

 Lipari Islands, where the ancients believed that Hephaestus, or Vulcan, had his 

 forge. Volcanic phenomena have been at all times regarded with a superstitious 

 awe, which has resulted in the generation of such myths as the one just mention- 

 ed, or of that in which Etna was said to have been formed by the mountains 

 under which an angry god had buried the rebellious Typhon. These stories 

 changed their form, but not their essence, under a Christian dispensation, and 

 Vulcano became regarded as the place of punishment of the Arian Emperor 

 Theodosius, and Etna* as that of Anne Boleyn, who had sinned by perverting the 

 faith of King Henry VIII. — From " Volcanoes, their Action and Distribution,^'' in 

 Popular Science Monthly for November. 



THE FORESTRY WORK OF THE TENTH CENSUS. 



BY SYLVESTER BAXTER. 



Up to the present time there has been but a vague conception of the extent 

 and value of one of the most important sources of the prosperity of the United 

 States. It seems the more strange when it is considered that this great item in 

 the nation's assets is not buried in the earth, like its mineral wealth, but stands 

 proudly upon the surface, like a mighty host, seen of all men. The entire wel- 



