562 Revieics — Prof. Judd — On Volcanoes. 



where Vulcan, surrounded by liis Cyclopes, forged the thunderbolts 

 of Zens. 



To the Pacific Islander's simple mind the crater of Kilauea in 

 Hawaii is the dwelling of the goddess File. In Java, the fury 

 of its volcanos has led to the dedication of the island to Siva, 

 the god of destruction, and in the very craters of these biirning 

 mountains the worshippers of Terror and Death were in the habit 

 of erecting their temples. 



So, also, the ever-smoking orifice of Tongariro in New Zealand 

 was considered by the Maoris as the only place worthy of receiving 

 the dead bodies of their chiefs ; for, when cast into the crater, they 

 went to sleep among the gods. 



To the untutored savage and to the ignorant bigot, alike, the 

 subterranean roarings and the thundering eruptions of vulcanos 

 implied a demand for human sacrifice to appease the residing 

 deity. Acting under the influence of fear and ferocity, the 

 priests of not a few religions have cast victims with great pomp 

 into the gaping mouths of these immense furnaces. 



Scarcely three centuries ago, when the early disciples of Christianity 

 were exterminated over the whole island of Japan, the followers of 

 the new religion were thrown by hundreds into one of the craters 

 of the Unsen, perhaps the most beautiful volcano in the Archipelago. 



Both in the old and new world the priests of the Eomish Church 

 have deemed such volcanic outbursts as emanations of the Evil One, 

 and have never ceased to conjure the restless and unquiet spirits of 

 the nether world to cease their troubling. 



EiYen in our own day, if we no longer look upon these phenomena 

 as belonging to the supernatural, still we are too apt to regard them 

 as altogether different from other facts of terrestrial vitality. 



The first effort at a better comprehension of the phenomena of 

 volcanos was made in 1788 by the illustrious Italian naturalist 

 Spallanzani, who visited and published an account of the volcanos 

 of his native land. The French geologist Dolomieu added observa- 

 tions on volcanic ejecta : our own countryman Sir William Hamilton, 

 Ambassador to the Court of Naples in 1764, devoted much time, 

 during his long residence of thirty-six years at that court, to careful 

 observations of Vesuvius and the neighbouring volcanos, the results 

 of which he published in his celebrated work, entitled " Canipi 

 Phlegr^i," accompanied by most excellent illustrations of the places 

 and phenomena which he saw. To these early writers we must 

 not omit to add the names of those three most famous German 

 naturalists, Von Buch, Humboldt, and Abich, who greatly extended 

 our knowledge of volcanos by their travels in different portions 

 of the globe. 



"But the first attempt to frame a satisfactory theory of volcanic 

 action, and to show the part which volcanoes have played in the 

 past history of our globe, together with their place in the present 

 economy, was made in 1825, by Poulett-Scrope, whose great 

 work ' Considerations on Volcanoes,' may be regarded as tlie earliest 

 systematic treatise on Vulcanology. Since the publication of this 



