Show IOE ICE FLOATING IN MOLTEN LAVA IN the account of the java catastrophe telegraphed to many of the papers east and west but omitted from the dispatches sent to sait halt faked L ake the following paragraph appeared PO ared one crone of the most singular freaks of the eruption was the carrying in the midst of molten lava iava of abedon a bed of solid ice iee of enormous size bize which had been emitted from one of the craters crater sj carried along by the current and landed on the extremity of point st nicholas on the northwest corner corne of th the island eisland this bed of ice was surrounded by a thick envelope of sand and scoriae which are such sanh non conductors of heat that a red hot stream of I 1 lata iata a running over it will not melt snow it issup la supposed that this ice had formed the crust of some somo vast subterranean lake this has haa been ridiculed by some p croons who think thema themselves elves smart the iden idea of a bed of ice iea in a 8 flood of iava lava emitted from a burning mountain seems preposterous to them but there are many any things in nature which appear to bo be paradoxes until we become betten better acquainted with them it is the same in science in religion and in phi fhi philosophy lovo it is often the ignorance of mortals which produces incredulity and then a little knowledge knowledg eIs eib is really a dangerous thing A gentleman who knows more about the matter under cona idera tion than common peoples people has explained that this sc called impossibility is not only but natural i hib nis name is dr J D bonnar and through the columns of the buffalo courier he explains the phenomenon people should not be too fast to call that impossible which la Is only a mystery because of their lack of knowledge dr bonnar says gg when water evaporates or chai chal changes 3 its state from that of a liquid to gas or steam it requires very much more heat to maintain itself in the latter condition than in the former at the sea level water uuna when it reaches centigrade Fah renil edt and niad t ahn hp asna arnam which is given off on w 11 also aiso register on the centigrade thermometer yet it actually contains ol of heat heal over and above that which Is sensible to the thermometer and this insensible heat Is said to bo be latent still it can be rendered sensible by passing the steam into cold water when one pound of steam will rales raibe raise rather rathe more than five pounds of water pounds from nom rom the freezing to the boiling point now the tremendous evaporation of water from the surface of some subterranean lake which was in the vicinity of the volcano and communicating with it by a channel abstracted heat so quickly and in such enor quantities from the body of water gnat it was frozen to a great depth before the eruptive power of the volcano reach reached edit jmj which cons consequently e belched forth the immense holds of lee ice spoken of on a small scale in the laboratory i with a bent glass tube tuba having a bulb on one end containing water by ratifying rarifying or exhausting the air in the tube ico ice will bo be formed in the bulb as the steam raising from the water abstracts the heat the same result Is obtained by pouring rio ether on the bulb the rapid evaporation of ether other abstracting the heat from the water causes it to congeal and this being the result on a small scale it to Is only rational to believe it possible in the volcanic eruption in java |