Abstract
ALTHOUGH I have not yet had the good fortune of reading Dr. Verbeek's “Krakatão,” yet in the review published in NATURE of October 22 (p. 601) there are one or two points I would like to draw attention to. In speaking of the earthquake of September, 1880, we are told that it may have facilitated the entrance of water by the Sunda fissure. If this were so, it certainly seems a strange thing that no less than three years should he necessary to heat the water before the explosion took place. I think that at present few geologists believe in water gaining access to the magma by fissures while we neglect percolation through porous rocks. It seems to me that the above earthquake was the result of rupture and extension of the magma-filled fissure towards the surface, in consequence of which the final outburst was put off for a short time by increasing the space for, and so lowering the tension of, the magma-filled fissure. By a careful study of the products of many volcanoes I have shown how the magma gradually dissolves or takes up within it water from the surrounding rocks, and as this is a slow process, the longer a volcano remains inactive, other things being equal, the more violent will be the subsequent eruption and the more vitreous will be the pumice owing to the rapid cooling of the magma froth in consequence of the large absorption of heat in converting the dissolved water into the gaseous state of steam, in the samé way that the temperature of seltzer water falls on allowing the gas to escape on removal of the cork. The above earthquake has its parallels in A.D. 63 at Vesuvius, those of 1536 and 1537 at Monte Nuovo, and in the late Ischian shocks.
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JOHNSTON-LAVIS, H. Krakatão. Nature 33, 6 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/033006c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/033006c0
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