THE WEST INDIAN EROPTIONS OF 1902, 209 



phenomena will doubtless extend and deepen. In the future, 

 therefore, we may expect that this interest will not be confined 

 as hitherto to the few and these few chiefly men of science, but 

 will be possessed by an ever-increasing number of those who 

 claim to be educated. 



The subject of volcanic action requires to a lar^e extent the 

 knowledge of observed facts, and also to a large extent 

 philosophical deductions and conclusions, and consequently it 

 appears to be a subject eminently worthy of the consideration 

 of the Victoria Institute. 



Volcanic action is indeed of such a conspicuous and startling- 

 character even when not destructive of life and property, that 

 it has from remote times riveted attention and excited the 

 wonder and awe of all those who have witnessed its more 

 violent manifestations. 



In ancient times, however, no attempt was made to explain 

 it or ascertain its natural causes. It was readily accounted for, 

 as were other striking natural phenomena, by attributing it to 

 supernatural causes. 



Classic fable abounds with allusions to volcanoes associating 

 them with Pluto, Proserpine, Vulcan, and Typhoeus. Pluto 

 seized Proserpine in Sicily, near to Etna, and carried her down 

 with him to reign as his queen in his own dominions far below. 

 Vulcan, the god of fire and fusion, forged the thunderbolts of 

 Jove by volcanic fires, and the smoke, and flames, and bellowings, 

 and shakings of an eruption were but the evidences of his 

 industry. The Greek Typhon was the personification of the 

 principle of evil, and described by the Latins, under the name 

 Typhoeus, as having a hundred dragon heads, fiery eyes, a black 

 tongue, and a terrible voice, and lying, groaning and uneasy, 

 buried under the volcanic regions of Sicily and Ischia, all 

 obviously suggested by the volcanic character of those islands. 



In mediaeval times, superstitious dread of the crater of a 

 volcano as an opening to the place for lost souls supplanted the 

 mythological fables of the ancients, and even at the present day 

 this supernatural asst>ciation lingers amongst the inhabitants of 

 volcanic regions. The denizens of the immediate neighbourhood 

 of Etna so regarded the crater 10,000 feet above them, and 

 think of it with mind-oppressing awe. 



With the eighteenth century began the scientific consideration 

 of volcanic action, for in 1700 Lemery, long before the chemistry 

 of Priestly and Davy, ascribed this action to chemical causes. 

 Lemery was Ibllowed by Breislak, and later by our great 

 English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, with similar hypotheses 



