WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
3 
Sights and Scenes in Lipari. 
Letter from Prof. Ward to Prof. . Continued 
from last number of Bulletin. 
Lipari (HSolian Isles), April 15, 1880. 
Dear Professor: 
Just one more excursion and then I will 
bore you no more. Between Lipari and the 
coast of Sicily — indeed only an hour’s sail from 
here— lies the celebrated crater-island Vulcano, 
with its satellite, Vulcanello. This latter is a low, 
sickle-shaped island; the sea having breached 
one side of its cone and quite filled the crater. 
The surface of the island offers only great 
Phlegrean fields of bristling lava, with patches 
of heavy volcanic sand which the wind has 
blown together. This sand is not, as it seems, 
decomposed rock, but it shows itself under the 
microscope to be minute crystals of Feldspar 
aud Hornblende. 
I regret that I cannot tell you in what year — 
just at the commencement of the Christian era — 
Vulcanello appeared above the waves. But a 
few minutes ago I threw my guide-book at a 
lizard, which ran across my floor, and I really 
cannot get up to consult it. Vulcano is really the 
most celebrated of all volcanoes of the world, in 
that it is the first one described by ancient his 
torians, and the one from which the rest took 
their name. Here, you know, lived the old 
one-eyed blacksmith, here he was visited by the 
lovely Venus, here came Achilles to have forged 
his wonderful shield, and here last week I — “a 
later Ulysses” — spent two delightful days. The 
volcano was bought a few years ago, for £8,000, 
by a Glasgow chemical company, who have 
erected works there for collecting its sulphur 
and other varied products. For a time they did 
well, but the last earthquake in Calabria was — 
excuse me — a great shock to them, as the moun- 
tain has been more sedate — less gaseous, so to 
speak — ever since. However, the company still 
keep at work, and their superintendent, Mr. 
N gave me kindest welcome, as I sought 
him with a letter from a London geologist. He 
has an improvised but comfortable residence on 
the plot of volcanic ash between the sea and the 
great volcano. His wife is a pleasant English 
lady from Yorkshire; and she nearly shed tears 
when I talked to tier of my early fossil hunts at 
Whitby and at Scarborough. Such, my dear 
, are the charms and virtues of Nautilus 
elegans and Ammonites oxynotus, — charms which 
I am sure will also awaken a responsive echo in 
your Liassic heart. Vulcano is not so high as 
Vesuvius, nor is it so broad at the base. But its 
great flat summit and its crater are each vastly 
larger than the Italian mountain. What strikes 
you most as you see it, either from a distance or 
close at hand, is that the emanations are not 
from the centre as you see at Vesuvius and Etna, 
but are from all around the rim or edge of the 
cone top. Here, particularly on the east and 
north, are a score of very active fumaroles, which 
form a great ring of vapor puffings, and seem to 
cut off at the last moment your access to the top. 
After the ascension, however you find that the 
present crater is in the middle of an immense 
fiat plain, due to the filling — level to the top — of 
the original great eraser. There is now a smaller 
crater, which we shall see has its own activity. 
But the main emanations of the mountain find 
their way around in a cylinder plane between 
this later filling and the old crater’s sides, coming 
up to the day in these many fumaroles, which 
thus map out in a striking way the old crater’s 
lip. The denudation and caving outwards of the 
mountain sides have in some few places brought 
this old lip, with its fumaroles, some distance 
down from the top. Here the miners are now at 
work. As fast as a fumarole stops puffing — for 
during weeks they are intermittent — the workmen 
dig from the side into the great fissures and bring 
out the sulphur which has crystallized in thick 
coatings and then quarry out the bordering rock 
and lixiviate from it Sal Ammoniac, Alum and 
Boracic acid. As I came along, they were at 
work on one of these vents, running in nearly 
naked, and coming out in a minute,. sweating 
from the heat and coughing from the fumes 
which, even in this quiescent state, threaten to 
suffocate them. 
MINERALOGY. 
Our new material in this department comprises 
a series of magnificent 
STIBNITES 
From Japan; 
From the Tyrol, and a lot of the 
ZEOLITES 
From Bergen Hill; 
also a shipment of extra quality and of all sizes 
NATIVE LODESTONE. 
TURQUOIS From New Mexico, and some 
choice carvings of 
AG-ALMATO LITE 
From China. 
MINERAL COLLECTIONS. 
The utility of object teaching is now no 
longer questioned. In all branches of Natural 
History the material for ocular demonstration is 
indispensable, and in no department has this 
come to be more fully recognized than in Miner- 
alogy and Geology. But what is wanted is not 
merely a hap hazard gathering of miscellaneous 
fragments, but typical characteristic series, sys- 
tematically arranged, and varying in extent with 
the amount of time to be devoted to the subject 
and the thoroughness with which it is to be pur- 
sued. Such collections are properly the work of 
a lifetime if each specimen is gathered singly, as 
is apt -to be the case, unless unusual facilities are 
available, facilities generally possessed only by 
national museums, and not always even by them. 
To be sure the latter receive contributions of ma 
terial from different sources, but these are of a 
desultory character, not infrequently mere rub- 
bish, which the fear of offending the donor pre- 
vents from being summarily disposed of. 
In order to secure the right kind of material 
many things are requisite. There must be a host 
of correspondents in all quarters of the globe, 
who must be more or less familiar with the ma- 
terial required, and these correspondents must be 
stimulated by the hope of pecuniary gain; there 
must be leisure for personal collecting trips to 
distant regions not supplied with collectors; 
The rock was of all shades of red, yellow and 
green, and very rotten, too, by reason of all the 
gases which had for so long passed through jt. 
It seems a great waste to see these fumaroles 
pouring out their contents into the open air ; and 
I suggested to Mr. N that he should cover 
one nearly over and condense these gases, at 
which lie gave a broad smile, and told me that 
in five minutes his cover would be so heated 
that condensation would cease! Something of 
that kind wms, however, tried on the floor of the 
present crater by passing the gases of a large 
fumarole along a long chamber of masonry over 
which flowed water, which in rainy times runs 
down the crater walls. But the work was hard- 
ly completed before the old smithy took offense, 
aud blew the whole thing to smithereens. Mr. 
N did not favor my wish to go down into 
the crater, and when I insisted he left me and 
went home. The crater of Vulcano is immense; 
it reminds one of what Vesuvius was when Monte 
Somma was part of its crater wall and the A trio 
del Cavallo part of the floor. I went slowly down 
into the crater, followed by a miner whom Mr. 
N had sent me. The path I followed — the 
only possible one — gave some trouble before I 
reached the crater floor. But once down there 
the view was glorious. The great surrounding 
walls were like vertical mountain cliffs, often 
overhanging by several yards, and the whole 
streaked up and down with green and yellow 
deposits of sulphur and other volcanic prod- 
ucts. Every now and then a stone would become 
detached and fall to the crater floor with a 
great sound which was caught up and thrown 
back with a wonderful echoing from the hollow 
cliffs. And ever and anon a deep hole on one 
side of the crater floor would launch out a great 
booming explosion, followed by a rattling rever- 
beration of minor peals. The floor where I 
walked was a variegated ash or feldspar clay 
much ravined by streams of water which — con- 
densing from the vapors — run down the crater 
walls. And yet most of the stones and lava 
blocks which lay around over this surface had 
their lower sides quite hot. In fact this clay 
floor is a great condensing crust, below which 
the hot vapors are ever spreading out and depos- 
iting their burden of sulphur in horizontal layers 
which grow thicker and thicker from below, 
and ever heave upwards. Every hundred yards 
or more were places where the crust had bulged 
up, broken open and let the vapor come flying 
out. Look well out that you do not step in one 
of these soft places, and take great care — as you 
dread sulphurous acid gas — that you keep to wind- 
ward of every fumarole of any size. Most beau- 
tiful are the tints of straw yellow of the sulphur 
crystals which line these fumarole chimneys. 
And in some which I examined there were 
bright red crystals of Realgar, glowing like 
coals sprinkled through the mass. Two of the 
largest of these fumaroles were over a yard in 
diameter, and shot out their gaseous emanations 
with a great deafening roar like a train of cars 
just emerging from a tunnel. Little stones which 
I threw in at these places flew quickly out, while 
large ones staid within but crackled like burning 
thorns as they heated and flew to pieces. I went 
with my companion to the edge of the deep hole 
or inner crater excentric on the plain of this 
great crater floor. Great clouds of vapor mostly 
filled it full, hiding all from our view. But 
when these occasionally floated away or ceased' 
for a moment,- I had an indistinct view down 
into frightful depths, with ledges and cliffs and 
chasms, and a pulpit-like pimiacle on which 
Milton would surely have placed Satan, mar- 
shalling his Infernal hosts. And then the awful 
sounds, the rumblings, the detonations, the whist- 
ling of winds, the dashing and hissing as of 
waves below; the groauings, the moanings, the 
sighings and the complaints. This great hole 
seemed to contain the pent-up spirit of the moun- 
tain, and to be filled with some kind of unearthly 
life. My companion and I found a large boulder 
which, with much pains, we rolled into this cra- 
ter, and thereat were produced such dire noises 
and explosions with tremblings of the ground all 
around us that we fled from the awful hole in real 
terror and alarm. For awhile I roamed about 
on the great crater floor, seeing and hearing 
many things which told of the heat and forces 
