114: If. iS. Washington — Basalts of Kula. 



Art. XY. — On the Basalts of Kula • by 

 Henry S. Washington, Ph.D. 



The folio wins; pages are a resume of an inaugural disserta- 

 tion presented by the writer last July at the University of 

 Leipzig for the degree of Ph.D. The original dissertation 

 being of too great a length and containing too much matter 

 (historical and topographical) foreign to the scope of the 

 Journal this paper was prepared embodying the chief and 

 most interesting petrographical facts and conclusions. This 

 being the case, the reader will pardon conciseness and the 

 omission of much detail, and for further information may be 

 referred to the original which is to appear shortly in New 

 York as a separate pamphlet. 



The rocks treated of were collected by the writer in the 

 spring of 18D2 near Kula, a small town of Asia Minor, lying 

 about 125 km E. by N. of Smyrna in a part of what formed 

 the ancient country of Lydia. This special district was called 

 by the Greeks Katakekaumene — the Burnt Country. It is a 

 tract, about 18 miles long by 8 wide, on the left bank of the 

 Hermos River (now Gecliz Chai) ; three basins of tertiary 

 limestone, separated from each other and bounded to the south 

 by ridges of mica (and hornblende) schist, while to the north 

 are limestone hills. These basins, and the schistose ridges, are 

 covered with well shaped volcanic cones and large lava streams 

 and fields, which belong to three distinct periods of activity. 

 The earliest is represented by large basaltic sheets, much de- 

 nuded in places, lying rather outside the basins proper, and 

 not treated of here. The second period, is represented by over 

 thirty cones, mostly on the schistose ridges, the forms denuded 

 and somewhat rounded and lowered, and covered with vege- 

 tation, as are also their lava streams. To the third period 

 belong three large volcanic cones — one in each basin — in an 

 exceedingly fresh and. unaltered state, their slopes of scoriae 

 bare of vegetation, and the lava streams as black, fresh, and 

 rugged as those of the modern outflows of Yesuvius or Etna. 



The large cone of the Kula Basin (the easternmost) is known 

 as Kula Devlit, or Kula Inkstand, the black lava streams 

 looking like ink running from an overturned inkstand. It has 

 a height above sea level of 885 meters, above its base of 165 

 meters, and its outer sides slope at an angle of 30° 30'. It is a 

 typical cinder cone, and shows two craters, one smaller in the 

 southwest corner of the larger, and both extremely well pre- 

 served. No emanations or other signs of present volcanic 

 activity are to be noticed. It has several lava streams, the 



