4s72 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
rOEEIGN INTELLIGENCE. 
The shores of tlie 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-bubbles. 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 11| 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 shoreg 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°*4 H. (95°"9 F.), 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. 
Hf.idinger. (Read before the Imper. Geol. Institute of Vienna, June IG, 18G3.) [Com- 
municated by Count Marschall.] 
t Director Ilaidinger, Proceed. Imp. Geol. Instit. Vienna, May 19, 1863. 
