WARD'S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
3 
Sights and Scenes in Lipari. 
Prof. Ward writes us from San Francisco that he is 
too busy in that city to give us any direct help about 
this issue of the Bulletin. But he refers us to “a 
rollicking- kind of a letter” which he wrote year be- 
fore last to a friend— a Professor in a New York 
college— and says that we ma5 r , if wj choose, cull from 
it any parts which we think to be “ sober enough and 
interesting enough” for our readers. We use our 
own judgment in giving the bulk of the letter. 
Lipari (Lipari, or iEolian Isles), ) 
April 15, 1880. f 
Dear Prof. : I am sitting in a small 
room, in a little Italian “locunda,” fighting fleas 
and ennui, and looking wistfully across twenty- 
five miles of sea to the Sicily coast, where I 
would that I now were. But there I am not. 
Like Ulysses (not that Illinois fellow, hut he of 
old, who came here, I believe, to gather geologi- 
cal specimens) ; like Ulvsses I have entered the 
dominions of the dire yEoIus, and the blasted old 
Wind-god has taken his revenge. I should have 
known better than to have braved the teachings 
of antiquity. But I have long had the Lipari 
Islands in my mind as a region which I must 
visit. So, having just done Tunis and Tripoli, 
clambered over the ruins of Carthage and skur- 
ried through Sardinia and Sicily. I in a venture- 
some moment took ship from Messina to come 
here. Hitherwards all was lovely. We tacked 
fearlessly across from Charybidis on the Sicilian 
to Scilla, on the Calabrian side of the beautiful 
Messina Channel, and then sailed northward over 
a smooth sea, guided — for night had fallen — by 
that grand, natural lighthouse — old Stromboli. 
The next morning we moored here in the little 
land-locked harbor, casting our anchor right 
where many a trireme and quadrireme was sunk 
when the Carthaginians, under Mago, their ad- 
miral, captured the Roman fleet under Cornelius 
Scipio. 
**■#*#* 
The Liparote peasants are an old-fashioned 
looking people, dressed, like those of Sardinia, 
in sheep skins (usually black), wilh the wool out. 
They do you a profound salaam in passing, say- 
ing “ bona dies ” in sood old Latin. In fact, all 
here is old — suggestive of the past. I live in 
the Via Tarpea\ the lower part of the town is 
called Diana from an old temple to that goddess 
which stood in the valley close by. And one of 
the fields adjoining gives yearly for a thousand 
pounds sterling of Etruscan vases to English 
museums. And down beneath these, in lower 
strata — the island over — are stone hatchets, so 
exactly like those from our Western States, that 
I dare not take any home and label them cor- 
rectly. How really wonderful, is the uniformity 
of the Stone Age. 
Better than these things, however, are the 
delicious purple figs, and the vines which, from 
sea level to the highest hill-tops, weep the sweet 
Moloasia wine. And then from off the shore, 
which in this little island means from every- 
where, the fishermen bring savory sea eggs 
( Echinus esculentus ), curious crabs and bright- 
red, precious coral. Mrs. —would be~ in- 
terested with the long clothes line which is 
stretched near my window, laden nearly to 
breaking. These are not old pocket handker- 
chiefs — rags tattered and torn — which weigh it 
down. No, my dear , you know better 
than that. They are cuttle-fishes — Victor Hugo’s 
Poulpes de mer — which are drying in the sun. 
With long boiling they make a nice soup, form 
the main meat diet of the Islanders, and with a 
special permit from the priests may be eaten on 
Friday as well as other days. I tried a piece, 
chewed on it for a quarter of an hour, and then 
spat it out, declaring it a palpable infringement 
on Goodyear’s patent. 
But * * * We are at the Liparis with 
geological intent, and we must go out and see 
things. That great hill out there— forming a 
quarter of the whole island — is Campo Bianco, 
the source of the Pumice stone of the world. 
Like so many other volcanic hills, its soft sides 
are furrowed in such a way that it looks like a 
great Japanese umbrella, three quarters opened, 
while a few larger ravines cleave it deeply from 
summit to base. Its lower half is thickly clothed 
with fig orchards and vineyards, every part of 
soil being economized with a wonder of careful 
MINERALOGY. 
In addition to our general stock, we still 
specially offer in this department, fine 
NEW ZEALAND JADE, 
ROUGH AND CUT, 
Also, a few specimens of 
QUEENSLAND OPAL, 
AND 
‘ HIIIDIDElNriTE, 
From North Carolina. 
Since the issue of the last number of the 
Bulletin, we have received among New Ma- 
terial : 
J A O 30 
From China and Burmah, in elegant ornamental 
shapes. 
ARQUERITE— SILVER AMALGAM, 
From British Columbia. 
CRYSTALLIZED AMALGAM, 
From Transylvania. 
CRYSTALLIZED MALACHITE, 
From Australia. 
And the following Minerals: 
ANALCITE, Melbourne, Australia. 
Aragonite,. Richmond, Victoria. 
Arsenic,. .Borneo. 
Azurite, South Australia. 
Bornite, Wallaroo, South Australia. 
Blue Dolomite, .-.Maldon, Victoria. 
Calcite, Collingwood, Victoria. 
Cervantite, - _ Sarawak, Borneo. 
Cobaltiferous Wad, Gyppsland, Victoria. 
Chalcopyrite, Gyppsland, Victoria. 
Chromite Nelson, New Zealand. 
Copper (Native), South Australia. 
Cokongite, Corong Peninsula, South Australia. 
Float Stone, Tasmania. 
Jasper,- Cape Otway, Victoria. 
Magnesite, Melbourne. 
Malachite, -Burra Burra, South Australia. 
Orthocrase, Phillip Island, Victoria. 
PHACOLITE, Phillip Island, Victoria. 
Ppiarmacosiderite, - Victoria. 
PH1LLIPS1TE,.. Collingwood, near Melbourne. 
Platinum, Brazil. 
SELWYNITE, Heathcote, Victoria. 
Semiopal, Angaston, South Australia. 
Stibnite, . _ j a p an . 
bTREAM Tin, . . -Ringarooma, Tasmania. 
Tridymite, Ljdtleton Harbor, New Zealand. 
Valentinite,-.,. Ringwood, Victoria. 
husbandry, of which we at home know little. 
The lower part of the mountain is of coarse, 
tufaeeous Pumice, with many harder trachytic 
masses. Up this for the first half hour you wind 
your way with tolerable ease and solid footing. 
Then all is scrabble, and wade through a chalk- 
like, pulverulent soil, which here is all dusty, 
and there is matted together by the last rain. 
But under your feet, and at the foot of each 
lit tie slope, are hundreds of balls about the size 
of an apple, which are more solid, and have 
rolled out from the chalky mass. Pick up one 
of these and dust it off and you have one of 
those pumice pieces which you see used by the 
painters at home. The soil is kneaded full of 
these, and thus obtains a certain consistence 
which makes amountain, where otherwise would 
be but a low hill of kaolin. To this upper moun- 
tain resort the Pumice Gatherers — men, women 
and children. You meet them in droves coming 
down the steep, narrow path, each one carrying 
on his or her head a basket two feet in diameter, 
and nearly five feet high, full and piled up with 
these Pumice balls. They have picked them up 
or shovelled them out on the hill-side, and are 
taking them to La Canneta, a little port three 
miles away, where, when weather permits, ships 
run in and load hastily for — everywhere, the 
world over. The peasants make two trips per 
day, and receive eight cents per trip. It is 
wonderful to see the sureness with which they 
come down the mountain, laughing and talking 
with a load on their heads which is larger than 
themselves. At first you are surprised to see 
their feet wrapped in coarse sacking. But fur- 
ther on you find now and then tracts of the hill- 
side where thousands of sharp Obsidian flakes 
are sprinkled through the white soil. These 
you can mostly trace to huge blocks of this 
black, glassy rock which crop out at points 
higher up the hill, and have scattered their 
shining splinters on every side. It is mainly 
near these Obsidian rocks that occur the masses 
of green Pumice, usually with large cellules and 
very frail, often strung across with fine fibres, 
each one. of which is tipped with a little black 
bead — the Pumice and the Obsidian being really 
but a bi-fold expression or structure of the same 
acid lava. It is a hard, weary climb to reach 
the summit of this hill, although but 1,500 feet 
above the sea. But what a view you have when 
there! Lipari is so small beneath you that you 
look out over only water at Vulcano, Salina, 
Alicude, Stromboli and others; “Isles that 
dot the dimpled bosom of the sultry summer 
sea;” and all seem to float whirled together in 
the channel 'twixt Sicily and Calabria, both of 
which lands, though respectively thirty and 
seventy miles away, you can distinctly see, with 
the little white villages on their shores. And 
here atop our mountain we find that we are at 
the brink of a great crater six miles across; this 
side of whose rim is entire, and the other is 
broken down and lost in the ocean. Looking 
carefully over the sharp edge you see that deep 
down in the bottom of this crater are quiet vine- 
yards, with a little village, while at one place a 
broad stream of bristling lava has run for two 
or three miles and emptied over a low cliff into 
the sea. We have climbed to this dizzy spot 
where the wind blows fearfully, for the sake of 
the general view, and to investigate these strange, 
great oak stumps— for so they look — which stand 
up, black and sharp, through the white crater- 
rim. These are great gnarled Obsidian masses 
which shine— green, blue and black — with their 
varied degree of transparence. I propose to load 
my six men with fragments of this; but they 
object, saying that there is plenty nearer home. 
And, surely enough, as we descend the cone 
upon another trail, we pass right across black 
fields or patches of shining Obsidian. These 
are usually so small that they show as detached 
masses in the Pumice cone; but some are broad 
fields whose extent shows them to be the over- 
flow of dikes, whose source is in the very roots 
of the mountain itself, or lower still. The edges 
of such a mass usually shade off by many varie- 
ties or degrees of Spherulites, in” which little 
peas of Obsidian are imbedded in a sort of 
Pumiceous rock. More rarely the converse oc- 
curs, and amass of Obsidian will be puffed out 
into a large bomb with deep clefts, which re- 
