4-J4 F. A. Ferret — Lava Eruption of Stromboli. 



Leaving Naples at 5 p. m. the light of the eruption was 

 plainly visible an hour after midnight. It was so strangely 

 white as to make one doubt, for a time, the possibility of its 

 being caused by the volcano, although no other source of 

 illumination was to be looked for in that locality. In another 

 place* the writer has referred to this phenomenon, which often 

 has given erroneous impressions concerning the temperature 

 of a lava, and which seems due to the selective absorption and 

 reflection of certain rays by the vapors emanating from the 

 lava. No opportunity has yet been found of experimentally 

 studying the matter to a conclusion. 



On approaching and passing the island, it was seen that a 

 stream of lava was flowing from the crater, or just below it, 

 down the western side of the Sciara to the sea. The nearer 

 view gave the normal golden yellow tint of an active lava 

 which flows freely and maintains an incandescent surface, but 

 this condition prevailed for only a third of the descent. In 

 the second section — evidently a deviation from the direct 

 descent and a region of accumulation — this glow was only 

 visible in the interstices of a blackened crust. Emerging 

 anew from this, the lava flowed directly toward, and almost to, 

 the sea in a broad stream of which the brightness was little if 

 at all, inferior to that of the first portion. 



From a part of the crater nearest the Sciara a bright glow 

 emanated continuously, while at intervals of from ten to fif- 

 teen minutes a fairly strong explosion would project to a 

 height of a hundred meters or more those sheaves of incan- 

 descent fragments which are characteristic of this form of 

 activity. 



The next evening was spent in the harbor of Lipari, on the 

 local steamer, and Stromboli was reached at daybreak of the 

 9th. The writer remained until the 30th, when the subsidence 

 of the lava column, the extension of the fumarolic area and 

 the absence of explosion all indicated the approaching end of 

 this exceptional eruption. From the 12th to the 19th the writer 

 had the pleasure of the company of Professor Gaetano 

 Platania. 



During this stay three trips were made to the summit, five 

 to the Sciara by boat, one in a circuit of the island, and several 

 to the Punta Labronzo on those days when bad weather pre- 

 vented the more important excursions. It is proposed to set 

 forth here those observations and studies of phenomena per- 

 sonally made during this time, and to follow this preliminary 

 report — when the analyses of the various products shall have 

 been made — by a more complete paper, which shall include an 



*" Volcanic Research at Kilanea in the Summer of 1911." Frank A. 

 Perret, this Journal (4), xxxvi, p. 480, 1913. 



