Abstract
PROF. F. OMORI, the well-known director of the Seismological Institute of Tokyo, has recently issued a third valuable memoir on the great eruption of the Sakura-jima on January 12, 1914 (Bull. Imp. Earthq. Inv. Com., vol. viii., December, 1916, pp. 181-321). The first two memoirs have already been noticed in NATURE (vol. xciv., p. 289, 1914, and vol. xcviii., p. 57, 1916). The third memoir is principally concerned with details which, though of great value, are unsuitable for reproduction in a note. Two or three points, however, are of general interest. On and around the plateau of Hakamagoshi, which projects from the west side of the island, there are unmistakable signs of the generation of volcanic blasts. The school-house was entirely destroyed and carried away. On a farm near the top of the plateau a great number of large mandarin-orange trees were uprooted and carried some distance up a slope. The blasts were directed principally against the north-east corner of Hakamagoshi. and the neighbouring village of Koike. The destruction here was general, and the tree-trunks were mostly overthrown or broken between two directions which, when produced backwards, passed through the highest and lowest of the western series of craterlets. On the east side of the island no distinct trace of the blast could be detected. Before the eruption the island was separated from the mainland on the east side by the Seto Strait, which, in its narrowest portion (400 metres in width), varied in depth from 29 to 40 fathoms. The lava entered the strait on the morning of January 13, blocked it up after sixteen days, and finally rose in height to about 54 metres above the sea. Ihe movement of the lava stream on this side ceased with the close of 1914—About three months later there took place a second outflow of lava, not directly from the craterlets, but from the southern face of the southeastern lava-field. The new outflows expanded into a form like that of a chrysanthemum leaf, the greatest elongation amounting to nearly 900 metres.
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The Great Eruption of Sakura-Jima. Nature 100, 35 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100035b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100035b0