CAUSE AND EFFECT: THE TARAWERA ERUPTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 143, 18 June 1910, Page 7

CAUSE AND EFFECT: THE TARAWERA ERUPTION.

_To the Editor.) Sir, —That slight earth tremors' will occasionally shake Rotorua is probable, •for such is the record of thermal districts the w-brld over. That an eruption such as Tarawera will occur within a space of time, measured by thousands of years, is unlikely. The beautiful siliceous structures, the (Pink and Wihite Terraces, were the cause of their own destruction. Formed through long ages by the action of water, in the midst of plutonic surroundings, the terraces owed their being to the slow deposition of matter ejected, in suspension, from, the depths below. Inch by inch, in perfect sysmmetry, their form was built up till the exhaustedmatrix that had so mav-ellously endowed them, erupted by a quake of local origin, succumbed to the weight of her own creations, letting down the unclaimed waters of the lake, -which, coming in contact with pyretic ores, caused a chemical combination producing lioat so intense that all fluid was instantly converted into steam, thus exerting, under pressure, a force sufficient not only to destroy a terrace, but to remove a mountain. As the terraces will again remodel through the long ages, so will they, once more, in their building up, make for their own destruction.—l asm, etc., H. JOHNSON.