VOLCANOES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27089, 11 July 1953, Page 3

VOLCANOES

Craters of Fire. By H. Tazieff. Hamish Hamilton. 223 pp. Volcanoes as Landscape Forms. By C. A. Cotton. Whitcombe and Tombs. 401 pp.

The study of volcanoes or “volcanology,” as it has been called, can be an extremely hazardous occupation. The enthusiast, if he be like Mr Tazieff, will not be content with viewing the erupting volcano from afar but will take great risks to make observations from close quarters. After an exhausting climb he may find himself peering over the lip of a crater watching toe ebb and flow of red hot lava, feeling the quivering cone beneath his feet and dodging the clouds of brown and bluish fumes and the projectiles of molten magma. If there be no eruption he may descend into the crater and braving the possibility of lethal gas take temperatures and study formations with the aid of a geological hammer. From the work of such venturesome spirits a good deal of information has been gathered, and on occasions has served as a warning enabling populations to be evacuated before eruptions. In all, 620 active volcanoes are known to exist in the world, and almost 500 of these are found along the shores of the oceans. Mr Tazieff has visited a number of these volcanoes and relates his experiences in the form of personal adventure. He also recalls some of the great historical eruptions, above all that of Kararatoa, in which an island was shattered to smithereens. The noise of the explosion was heard in Australia, more than 2500 miles away. The vast cloud of volcanic dust flung into the stratosphere by the eruption travelled round the globe several times in the course of the following months.

The second book on volcanoes is a text-book and deals with the subject more as a study of landscape forms whose origin is volcanic and the theory of volcanism and petrogenesis. The book begins with a study of the mechanism of volcanoes, types of eruption and kinds of volcanoes and proceeds to discuss the several types of formation whose origin can be traced to volcanic activity. NOT ’ARF [A Fourth Leader in “The Times’' J Wanderers in the pleasant little riverside garden down Ratcliff way have lately been fascinated by a London County Council notice that reads, “This ground is temporarily closed for grass to become established after reinstatement.” Blades of grass are evidently seen by a kindly Countv Hall as civil servants working their passage on to the permanent strength. Something of the same approach, this time towards children, is to be detected in an otherwise admirable Eamphlet published today by the .C.C. on “The Art of Speaking.” “Speech or language,” the authors venture to suggest, is “the foundation of all human communication,” but they do not trust themselves unaided to put forward this proposition. They refer any reader who may be sceptical of its truth to the authority of tae “Report on Primary Education in Scot*'' land” (1946).

When they do offer their own observations they are surprisingly optimistic. It is seldom, in their opinion, that such expressions as “0.K.” or “Yeah” in its American form are now heard, nor, except as an affectation, is the nasal speech of Hollywood finding many imitators. This, if it is true, is good news and shows that toe young people to be heard cheerfully exchanging repartees—not wisecracks—and echoing the crooners as they crowd through the floodlit streets are not fair specimens of their generation. London teachers, it seems, are doing much to help children to “speak clearly, gracefully, and with pride.” Is the inference that the parents of these children left school ashamed of the sound of their own voices? If so, they had. on the testimony of a Lorfdoner educated at one of toe earliest board schools, certain compensations. Mr H. M. Tomlinson, who is coming up to 80, has just recalled that in his cockney childhood he never met another youngster who could not read.

But the L.C.C. pamphleteers sweep away all resistance when they come out, boldly and wisely, in defence of bilingualism as preferable to the replacement of native speech by a colourless standard dialect. There they put a finder on the enemy. Dropped aitches, rhyming slang, local variations of vowel sounds, unconventional ways with consonants may—like toe pearly buttons of* the costers —be on the way out. Cockneys and geordies, Lancashire lads and Glaswegians will, perhaps, one day all speak alike. If so. it must be a natural process and <not a by-product of the snobbery that cuts at the roots of individualism. It is better to say “wotcher” and “not ’arf” and to sing “0.K., ma baby doll” than to lapse into inexpressive refinement.

AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE, 19001950 (Melbourne University Press. 64 pp.) is a brief survey of Australian literature, both pure and “applied,” in the last 50 years, by H. M. Green, author of “An Outline of Australian Literature,” published in 1930. Capable short criticisms sum up all the major figures in this rich period, and everything that could be expected in so small a booklet is to be found.