The following is an abstract of the conclusions reached in the official report. First those relating to Kilauea.
r. No cinder cones were present because the jets did not rise high enough to allow the accumulation of fragments.
2. The action was markedly quiet. The amount of lava dis charged in 1840 was about half of that thrown out in 1823.
3. The lava finds an exit through rents in the ledges low down.
4. A pit four hundred to five hundred feet deep was formed at the time of eruption (in 1832 and 1840).
5. There were three great eruptions in seventeen years, with intervals of nine years and eight years.
6. There have been discharges from the walls of the pit as well as at the bottom. The pools rise and fall independently of each other.
7. The lavas are principally glassy scoriae; no true pumice ferruginous stalactites formed by the action of steam on the roofs of caves. Minerals are sulphur, gypsum, iron alum, copper sul phate, sal-ammoniac and gases. Olivine is frequent and must have come from below in the solid form.
8. There is an unceasing current to the southwest, a part of a boiling movement. The temperature of the molten lava probably 1,900 degrees Fah.
9. Kilauea is not a solfatara, though the sulphur banks (near the Volcano House) may be so regarded.
General conclusions concerning both volcanoes.
1. Absence of cinder cones.
2. Eruptions are quiet.
3. Mauna Loa and Kilauea are isolated ; there is no sympathy in their eruptions, so that no action like that of a syphon can be predicated.
4. The eruptions require water, which is supplied by the ac cumulations at the surface.
5. These volcanoes are not safety valves.
6. The volcanic action is simply an overflow of a liquid which accumulates till it exerts a pressure adequate to force discharges through weak walls. It is a change from a quiet flow to great activity upon the mountain's side. There is no good evidence to prove that water reaches to the central fire of the earth's interior.
7. The kinds of crater are (a) lava cones, (b) cinder scoria cones, (c) tufa cones, (d) pit craters.
8. Kilauea and ten of the Mount Loa cones are pit craters, the results of subsidence. The formation of the pits, or places of ejection of fire, have been from the northwest to the southeast.
The two kinds of lava were noticed, the pahoehoe and aa, and the latter were called "clinkers" which were represented as or dinary lava ceasing to move through cooling, and then stimulated to activity by a fresh ejection which broke up the original stream and forced the fragments forwards ; compared also to the break ing up of ice in rivers. The slope of this land from Kilauea to Nanawale was stated to be 28' or one hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, and the average slope of Mauna Loa 6° 3o'.