The Report on the volcanic eruption in the West Indies,
summarised in Thursday's Times, makes most interesting reading. Dr. Tempest Anderson and Dr. J. S. Platt, who were commies ioned to proceed to the West Indies by the Royal Society, spent nearly four weeks in the neighbourhood of La Soufriere. The account of the eruption, compiled from trustworthy sources and confirmed by their own experience at Martinique, where they saw at close quarters a very consider. able eruption of Mont Pelee, seems to show that there is a regular sequence of events in these convulsions of Nature. In the preliminary stages there are outbursts of steam, fine dust, stones, and the discharge of crater lakes in torrents of boiling water and mud. Then, when the throat of the crater is cleared, the climax is reached in the overflow of an avalanche of incan- descent sand and gases, accompanied by a great black cloud and moving with immense velocity. At the crisis of the outburst on St. Vincent the whole north end of the island was covered in darkness, and the roaring of the mountain was "a long-drawn- out, continuous sound resembling the roar of a gigantic animal in great pain." But the most wonderful and sinister feature of the whole was the black cloud. That witnessed by the investigators from a small sailing boat is described as " globular, with a bulging surface, covered with rounded pro- tuberant masses, which swelled and multiplied with a terrible energy. It rushed forward over the waters, directly towards us, boiling, and changing its form every instant. In its face there sparkled innumerable lightnings, short, and many of them horizontal. Especially at its base there was a con- tinuous scintillation. The cloud itself was black as night, dense and solid, and the flickering lightnings gave it an indescribably venomous appearance." The touch of this cloud meant death to any living thing, the only instances of escape where it had descended on the villages being those of persons who had shut themselves up in cellars, or had closed all doors and windows.
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