THE 



AMERICAN JOURNALOFSCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. VII. — On an Artificial Lava-Flow and its Spher- 

 ulitic Crystallisation I by L. Y. Piksson. (With Plate I.) 



The material which forms tlie basis of the following article, 

 was obtained a number of years ago by the late Prof. Chas. E. 

 Beecher, of Yale University, at Kane, an industrial town with 

 glass-works, in McKean county, Penn., and presented to the 

 writer. It appears that one of the furnaces in the glass-works 

 accidentally broke, allowing the molten glass to escape ; it 

 flowed into the pit below and cooled there. When cold the 

 mass of glass was blasted out and the broken material piled on 

 one side. It was from this broken material that the specimens 

 were obtained. The furnace is stated to have been 60 feet 

 long by 25 feet wide, and the molten glass in it at the time to 

 have been from 4 to 5 feet deep. This would have made 

 about 6000 cubic feet of glass, or say 700,000 pounds, an 

 amount which formed a flow of no mean size, when viewed 

 from tlie experimental standpoint. During the flow and 

 while cooling it partially crystallized, assuming features which 

 it is the object of this paper to present. An accident of this 

 kind to a glass furnace by which a flow of molten glass was 

 produced, which partly crystallized, has been described by the 

 late Professor Fouque."'^' In this case portions of the glass were 

 filled with milky white nodules with a gi'eenish cast of color, 

 which were in places the size of a nut. These nodules were 

 spherulites which Fouque proved to consist of radially fibrous 

 prisms of wollastonite. Thanks to the kindness of Professor 

 A. Lacroix of the Musee d'histoire naturelle in Paris the writer 

 has been able to examine some of the glass described by 

 Fouque and to confirm his conclusions. The present material, 

 while resembling it in some respects, differs in several impor- 

 tant particulars, as will be presently shown. 



*Compt. Eendus, cix, Jan. 1, 1889. 



Am. Jour. Sci,— Fourth Series, Vol. XXX, No. 176. — August, 1910. 



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