"a 
Eruption of Mauna Loa and Kilauea, 105 
matic transportations. Its origin is not Australian as it has 
been sometimes admitted, nor Asiatic, still less European ; 
but it is born, has been cradled, and has grown up on this 
continent, This preservation of peculiar types, present at 
divers geological epochs, indicates a successive and slow devel- 
opment of formations without such great disturbances as are 
recognizable in other countries ; and it proves also that the 
climatic conditions of our North American continent have con- 
tinued about the same as they are now from the Cretaceous 
through the Tertiary. No species found in these formations of 
— indicates a warmer temperature than that of the Southern 
tates, 
We know very little yet of the vegetation of our Tertiary 
formations, and it is impossible to attempt now a comparison of 
the floras of the Tertiary and of the Cretaceous in America. 
Nevertheless, from the species already published, even from 
those of the Tertiary of Nebraska, obtained by Dr. Hayden 
and Dr. LeConte, the generic affinity is striking and therefore 
the general American facies is equally represented in both. 
Vegetable remains are the records of the natural phenomena 
which have governed the surface of our earth at different epochs. 
Nowhere else can the successive development of a long series 
of vegetable cycles, without cataclysmatic interruptions, be 
followed as well as in America. When, then, the fossil plants 
of our country have been thoroughly studied, they will unfold 
0 us the history of nature’s proceedings during the geological 
times, Questions of a high order are therefore intimately al- 
to the study of those remains of fossil plants so little val- 
ued among us even now. 
, March 19, 1868. 
. 
— 
Arr. XIII — Recent Eruption of Mauna Loa and Kilauea, 
Hawaii. 
ar following are extracts from some of the accounts of 
and f nearly; that of Kaw, on the southern, from / to a line 
Tunning §.8.H. from Kilaues eh 
South of Hilo, Kahuku lies almost in a direct line between the 
thawit of M. Loa and the south cape, 12 or 15 miles north of 
, and this line was the course of the principal fissures 
