Show THE NATURE OF VOLCANOES Prof N S Shaler of Harvard master mas-ter of geology treats of volcanoes In the June number of the North American Ameri-can Review He proves that they are the results of explosions 0 steam the rock and water that have long lain In the earth taking the line of least resistance along some fault In the utrata and reaching the surface at a temperature of something like 2000 degrees de-grees Fahrenheit He shows by the location of the active volcanoes that none of them Is very far from the sea and his theory Is that the erupted matter mat-ter IS l the watersoaked rock that has been deposited ages ago under thousands thou-sands of feet of f a bottom moving upward under tremendous pressure till It Is ejected In superheated form He describes his Inspection of Vesuvius In I Its mild eruption of 1882 showing that the successive explosions came precisely as the explosions of the steam In 0 locomotive Tho energy of these 1 explosions varies greatly Those of St Vincent and Mont Pelee were geologically I geologi-cally Insignificant compared with the Krakntoa explosion which wan a hundred hun-dred time as violent nnd which threw such masses of volcanic dust into the air ns made midnight darkness many hundreds of miles from the point of eruption and so fine that mUch of It floated for three years all the earth about before It came to rest and some part of It appears to have scattered Into what were called whining clouds I which gradually rose higher and higher until they seemed to escape from our I atmosphere What then made these comparatively trifling explosions such I horrible calamities Undoubtedly the I direction of the wind which carried the mephitic gases and coarse ash to the fated town and quickly suffocated the people there much of these fatal fumes being composed of carbonic acid gas which was mingled with sulphur ous fumes bore down by the scoria laden air At the same time the eruption erup-tion was prolific of volcanic bombs that Is masses of flying lava which lake on a roughly spherical form and hardening harden-ing on the outside discharged masses of flaming fluid fire as they struck on the house and were broken Prof Shaler thinks It will he pos Klble to give warning of approaching volcanic explosions by systematic observations ob-servations along the volcanic belt Instancing in-stancing the fact that the explosion of Sguffrlere on St Vincent followed quickly quick-ly 1 the explosion of Mont Pelee on Martinique Mar-tinique and thus the terrible destruction destruc-tion of life may be averted But on the whole he concluded that for the magnitude of the force brought Into play by volcanlc eruptions the losses or life from them have been singularly small compared with the destructions 0 war and nervcntnble or curable disease dis-ease and that life li > here an the result of at least a hundred million years of uninterrupted progress shows that thc Interference of the undorcnrth with the course of life has not been serious |