31 MAY 1902, Page 2

There is no further news of disaster• from the West

Indies, but La Pelee, in Martinique, is still pouring out ashes, which reach as far• as Barbados, and are not, the chemists now explain, in any way fertilising. If no further explosion occurs, it will remain for the Governments concerned to resettle or remove the ruined section of the population, and for the men of science to collect and collate all the evidence as to the pre- litninary symptoms of great eruptions. Man can do nothing to prevent them, but he can accumulate the evidence of phenomena which should have served as warnings.