VOLCANIC ACTIVITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 60, 8 September 1937, Page 18

VOLCANIC ACTIVITY

A POPULAR LECTURE

Volcanic action was the subject of a popular lecture by Dr. P. Marshall which was given in the Dominion Museum last evening. Many parts of the world'furnished examples of the phenomena which the lecturer described, and the varying types of volcanic action were made clear to the audience by means of films and lantern slides, in addition to the spoken word. One film showed Vesuvius in eruption and the flowing lava overwhelming buildings in villages built at the .base of the volcano, and another gave an awe-inspiring glimpse of the seething crater of Kilauea. The volcanoes of Java and New Zealand's own volcanoes, Tarawera, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu, were amongst the subjects of the lantern slides.

During the course of his lecture Dr. Marshall drew special attention to the unique character of past volcanic activity in New Zealand. The plateau between Rotorua and the Waikato had been formed, he said, entirely of in-' candescent dust of such high temperature that it fused together after it fell. This was the dominant feature of the Taupo-Rotorua region. Many other points of interest about volcanic activity in New Zealand and elsewhere were touched upon, and no doubt many in the audience, when next they visit the Dominion's thermal region, will do so with a quickened interest in view of what they learnt from Dr. Marshall's lecture.