288 R. T. HILL — PELE AND THE WINDWARD ARCHIPELAGO 



Evidence is rapidly accumulating that the earth is constantly exud- 

 ing its interior substance as gases into space, and that its interior is a 

 great reservoir of material and forces from which invisible matter is 

 escaping. Sir William Ramsey has just announced that the supply of 

 helium, an element only recently discovered by Raleigh in the atmos- 

 phere and which is known to exist in the sun, is constantly passing from 

 the earth to the atmosphere. It not only comes up with the .hot springs, 

 but presumably oozes from the soil, and the quantity thus escaping is 

 from 3,000 to 6,000 times more than can be accounted for as a return 

 to the atmosphere of helium washed down by rain. 



In the light of the interior theory, vulcanism in its simplest concep- 

 tion may be theoretically considered as the transfer of matter from the 

 earth's interior to its exterior in the proportion of about 1 part of solids 

 to the crust and 99 parts of gases to the atmosphere and ocean. The 

 enormous masses of crystalline rocks now found on or near the surface 

 of the earth (and we have no language to express its weight in tons or 

 dimensions in cubic feet) represent secondary material differentiated 

 from the interior gaseous protomagma. These rock masses which now 

 appear to us as solids may be merely gases which have been locked into 

 conditions of stability by chemical and physical combinations. 



Reduced to the simplest statement, the interior hypothesis of volcanoes 

 is that they are gas vents, and volcanic rocks are their by-products. 



In view of the facts presented, may we not weigh with consideration 

 the words of the venerable Professor Suess, of Vienna, one of the world's 

 greatest geological thinkers, who has lately stated that 



" volcanoes are not fed by the infiltration of ocean water, but ocean water received 

 additions to its volume by every (volcanic) eruption. . . . The hottest dry 

 fumaroles, forming deposits of the ore by sublimation, the rain of hydrochloric 

 acid from Vesuvius and the salt of the Altenzalza mines, the hot vapors which 

 recently burned the bodies of the unfortunate victims at Martinique without set- 

 ting fire to their clothes, and the warm, healing waters which rise up here before 

 our eyes are members of one individual series of phenomena. The earth is still 

 giving off gases in a manner which may be compared to what we observe in the 

 spots on the sun or on every large mass of cooling steel." * 



The traditions of geology have held the majority of its students to the 

 crustal theories, but beyond the rank and file there are a few larger minds 

 who see greater causes than the simple testimony of the cold, dead crust. 

 These constitute the nucleus of the modern school of geology, which, 

 with the aid of the physicist, the chemist, and the mathematical astrono- 

 mer, will ultimately solve the great problem of the physical nature of 

 the basic primitive matter of the earth's interior, from which all known 

 crustal substances have been evolved through volcanic action. 



*E. Suess: Hot springs and volcanic phenomena. The Geog. Jour., London, vol. xx, 1902, p. 522. 



