456 



DISTRIBUTION OP PLANTS. 



drecl feet deep. The bottom seemed in great part composed of sand, 

 perhaps fragmentary lava, with here and there scattered shrubs and 

 ferns. Some threads of capillary obsidian were met with ; the first 

 remarked by myself on this Windward side of the Great Crater. — The 

 fifth pit-crater, Varerau-kawaihi, was found to be oblong, three-fourths 

 of a mile in length by half a mile wide, and containing two pits; dis- 

 tinct at the bottom, with a moi^e shallow shelf at one end. The 

 extreme depth seemed eight or nine hundred feet ; the bottom being 

 overgrown with scattered ferns, among which, the small tree-fern, 

 BlecJinum Fontanesianum, was distinctly made out. — The space beyond 

 was not traversed ; but two days afterwards, I visited a pit-crater, 

 which I supposed to be next in order; and which proved the fourth. 

 It was nearly circular, about a quarter of a mile in diameter, and six 

 hundred feet deep ; with steam arising from old fissures on the North- 

 ern brink, and in the Southern wall, and the bottom chiefly covered 

 with blocks of lava. — The next or third pit-crater was slightly oval, 

 seeming a quarter of a mile in diameter, by eight hundred feet deep ; 

 with much steam arising from old fissures in the Northeastern wall. 

 Bits of j^^imice, of ancient date, were scattered around ; being the only 

 pumice I met with to the Windward of the Great molten lake. — Pass- 

 ing a sudden descent of about a hundred feet, the line of settling at a 

 right angle with that North of the Great Crater; half a mile within 

 the sunken district, I found the second pit-crater ; the smallest in tlie 

 series, being only about seven hundred feet long, by five hundred 

 wide, and three hundred deep. Less than a mile beyond, is the first 

 pit-crater ; also small, and perhaps to be regarded as an appendage of 

 the Great Crater, being near the Southeastern brink. 



The Hawaiian Group contains only four lava-fountains, or real seats 

 of volcanic action ; three of which are on the Island of Hawaii. Of 

 the numerous pseudo-craters, secondary results of volcanic action, 

 four different kinds can be distinguished. — First, the pit-craters; most 

 of them contained in the series just mentioned. — Second, the small, 

 well-defined pseudo-craters of the ragged lava-mountains; perhaps all of 

 them enumerated above. — Third, the heaps of scoria and fragmentary 

 lava; deriving, as at Nanavali, their crater-like shape, from the mate- 

 rial being thrown from a centre upwards and outwards. These heaps 

 are of all sizes, from ten feet to nearly a thousand feet high ; occurring 

 chiefly on the great mountains on Hawaii and East Maui, in linear 

 series down the flanks, and sometimes scattered; some even within 



