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PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. II, October, 1948 
southwest from the present leeward rim of the 
crater decrease to less than 10 inches in the 
next half mile to leeward. The size of particles 
decreases rapidly also; no particles reaching a 
diameter of Vi inch are found in the beds of 
the original blanket deposit at distances 2 
miles to leeward. Pieces of frothy pumice con¬ 
siderably larger than this are found in pockets 
as much as 4 miles distant, but their occurrence 
indicates, without much question, that they have 
been skipped and rolled downhill by wind 
drifting. This very localized distribution of the 
products of the greatest vitric ash eruptions 
known to have come from the central crater of 
Kilauea, raises a serious question as to the abil¬ 
ity of earlier Kilauea crater explosions to have 
contributed directly and appreciably to the ash 
deposits of Hilina Pali and similar areas over 
10 miles from the central crater. 
The next three eruptions, numbers 10, 11, 
and 12, were relatively weak phreatic explosions, 
as the lithic particles in their deposits are all 
smaller than medium gravel. The earlier deposit 
is thicker on the southwest rim, perhaps due to 
trade-wind control during deposition, while the 
latter two are thickest on the windward rim. 
The time intervening between each of these 
eruptions was insufficient for reforestation, but 
the time following the third one was long 
enough to produce a vegetative cover, as evi¬ 
denced in the section on the southeast rim 
at the edge of the humid area. A good soil is 
present on the deposit from this twelfth erup¬ 
tion on the northwest rim, but it represents a 
telescoping of several ensuing time intervals 
and uninterrupted growth of vegetation up to 
the time of the seventeenth eruption. 
The thirteenth eruption was essentially one 
of intense fountaining, but locally several of the 
explosions hurled out small amounts of wall- 
rock fragments (probably from talus piles 
within the craters) which are mingled with the 
pumice. The deposit is localized (Fig. 2C): 
80 inches of coarse and fine pumice with a few 
lithic blocks are found on the south rim due 
west of Keanakakoi; 11 inches of bedded 
pumice with a few small lithic fragments are 
found on the southeast rim; and a few inches 
of pumice alone are found on the rest of the 
circumference of the crater. A thin pahoehoe 
flow, which issued from a concentric crack a 
mile southwest of the crater and flowed over 
several acres of surface, is correlated tentatively 
with this magmatic eruption. 
In detail, the thickest section of this deposit 
consists of: 
Inches 
Desert surface 
Fine vitric shards approaching dune sand. 4 
Textural break 
Bedded, fine to coarse pumice, some lithic 
fragments . ..24 
Textural break 
Bedded, pisolidc vitric shards and coarse 
pumice . 40 
Textural break 
Coarse pumice .. 12 
Surface of underlying material 
The fourteenth eruption was phreatic, and its 
deposits remain only on the west and southwest 
rim of the crater: 3 inches of lithic fragments 
up to half an inch in diameter on the west rim, 
and 24 inches of bedded lithic dust on medium 
to coarse lithic fragments on the southwest 
rim. 
The fifteenth eruption was a phreatic explo¬ 
sion which deposited lithic blocks of over a 
cubic foot in volume more than a quarter of 
a mile beyond the present southwest rim and 
on Uwekahuna Bluff (Fig. 2D). At the south¬ 
west rim, the deposit is 36 inches thick and con¬ 
sists of large to small lithic blocks mixed 
through a matrix of pisolitic dust. Away from 
the crater rim, the lithic fragments play out 
rapidly from the thick layer of partly consoli¬ 
dated, fine pisolitic dust. At the contact of the 
Kilauea slope against Mauna Loa at the foot 
of Kipuka Puaulu (Bird Park), the section is 
over 6 inches thick, consisting of an upper layer 
of compact pisolitic dust, a middle layer of dust 
and fine lithic sand, and a lower layer of piso¬ 
litic dust. This bed mantles the lower mile of 
the Mauna Loa slope northwest of Kilauea. It 
