VOLCANOES.

Southland Times, Issue 20832, 22 July 1929, Page 3

VOLCANOES.

To The Editor.

Sir, —While we are on the subject of earthquakes, do we ever think of the enormous force applied in smashing up the rocks of cur crust, especially on some of them? We look at Sutherland Falls, or Niagara and exclaim at the magnificence of it all, as the water comes down with a roar until you cannot hear yourself speak, but your whole interest in a volcanic mountain is generally centered in the best way to climb it. Now Egmount is not by no manner of means the highest mountain volcano in the world but it is eight or nine thousand feet with a pipe up the centre to carry off the stones, mud, water, or other material that may be collected down below, not at its base, but often from many miles away, how is it done? What terrific force must be applied to put stuff up that height; some of the stones often- two, or three feet wide.

One time I was looking on while men were putting fires of straw and redhot coals in at the bottom of a factory stack, or chimney to drive the cold air out. On asking what it was all about, I was told that it had been struck by lighting, and two loads of brick blown out of its side, and we have had to let it cool down to allow us to examine it inside for damages. Now we have to heat it up until it will lift a big potato out of our hand, and put it out at the top. Once the nine boilers are on to it for a few days it will take a man up; the stack was under three hundred feet. Now, if this could be done our Egmont had an easy job to lift material, and to even pull a long distance. We cannot go down to examine how things are done, but we can often see some of the works that have been elevated. I at one time saw in Italy an outcrop of “dykes” that ran up the country for as far as the eye could see. I knew- it was going to an old volcano; but which end? We have seen great cracks in the ground after a special outburst, and this had sealed one. Granite is another igneous rock that is supposed to come all the way from the surface of a molten sea. There are many small intrusions, and many very large ones. How would you like to have been living here when our west coast granite was coming up like a great lava deluge? Yet we have all this, and goldreefs, and lodes of all sorts that have pushed their way up through fissures until they have filled them up, and all I suppose on account of fire, water, and gas coming together. A man told me not long ago that at a place in the North Island he could put a stick in a crack of a particular rock and set fire to it. It is a wonder that we are all alive, but all this work has its purpose, no doubt. One of the great risks to-day in our big modern cities is the fireplugs being covered with fallen buildings. I was in San Francisco not long ago, and went over the shock area there, everything was all right and skyscrapers up, or going up wholesale, but I was told that if the fireplugs had not got covered when fire broke out things would not have been half as bad. Very decorative iron chimneys could be put in- houses so as to save that risk, and high buildings in certain spots I could name seem to me to be foolish in the extreme. There is one thing that the people of Murichison may be thankful for, and that is the unlikelihood of their being shaken up again in their time.—l am, etc., JAMES WELSH. Winton, July 19.