472 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



FOBEIGrN INTELLIGENCE. 



The shores of the Caspian Sea had been shaken by frequent and violent 

 earthquakes and eruptions during the early months of 1859, when Captain 

 Kumany and Lieut. Petrof, of the Russian navy, discovered that a new 

 island had been raised in that sea.* Mr. Abich visited the island on June 

 20th, 1859, and found that it had an elliptical shape, between 400 and 500 

 paces in circumference, very slightly convex, and with a small loamy flat 

 area, bearing round shallow pools of water, kept in continual motion by the 

 rising of gas-bnbbles. The island was then 286 feet long and 225 feet 

 broad. Its height (found by Captain Kumany to be 18 feet) had already 

 lessened to llh feet. At the end of July it was only 6 feet high ; and in 

 November it had disappeared below the sea -level. In 1862 there was an 

 increasing depth of water at the place ; and in January, 1863, there were 

 12 to 13 feet of water there. Mr. Abich proposes that the island should be 

 known as Kumany Island, in honour of the officer who first ascertained its 

 existence. 



The island had risen from a flat sea-bottom of sandstone and marl, in 

 75 feet depth of water, and 1000 feet from the shore. The eruptive action 

 had evidently worked directly upwards through a conical accumulation of 

 mechanically divided rock-substances, altered hydro-chemically, and such 

 as might be derived from the sandy and gritty members of the molasse 

 formation that exists on the neighbouring shores of the Caspian. Ac- 

 cording to Captain Kumany, the materials of the newly-raised island were 

 tough and very hot, the temperature increasing with the depth. Mr. Abich 

 found the island to have a temperature of 28 0, 4 R. (95°'9 E.), the atmo- 

 spheric temperature being 20°'3 H. (77°"6 F.). By his further investigations, 

 including chemical analysis, Mr. Abich finds that the muddy lavas of the 

 Caspian region show evident analogies with certain tufaceous rocks of 

 southern Italy ; and that those of them which are insoluble in hydro- 

 chloric acid correspond to the normal siliciferous eruptive trachytic por- 

 phyries of Armenia and the Ponza Islands. He thinks that probably a 

 formation of such porphyries, overlaid by sediments, extends over the cen- 

 tral area of the Caspian Sea, and that the muddy lavas originate from a 

 kind of trachytic tuff, forced upwards through vein-like fissures. The ex- 

 istence of two systems of fissures, intersecting each other at oblique an- 

 gles, appears evident to Mr. Abich from the situation of the insular mud- 

 volcanos in the Caspian, of the islands raised from its bed, and of the 

 fumaroles, naphtha-springs, and mineral waters on its shores, by the lines 

 of earthquake-shocks (Alat, in the summer of 1860), and by a vein of 

 substances, analogous in composition to the mud-lavas of Kumany Island, 

 filling a crevice in a valley of elevation near Teflis. 



A piece of yellow amber,t flattened and round, 3 inches long and about 

 2 inches broad, found in a Tertiary sand, at about 18 feet beneath the sur- 

 face, near Polnisch-Ostrau, in Austrian Silesia, is remarkable on account 

 of having its external crust, of a deep honey-yellow tint, completely har- 

 dened, whilst its interior, yellowish-white, pellucid, and homogeneous por- 

 tion still preserved its original soft resinous consistence. 



* 'On a Volcanic Island in the Caspian Sea.' By Dr. H. Abich and Director W. 

 Haidinger, (Read before the Tmper. Geol. Institute of Vienna, June 16, 1863.) [Com- 

 municated by Count Marsohall.] 



f Director Haidiuger, Proceed. Imp. Geol. Instit. Vienna, May 19, 1863. 



