Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 113, Vol. III, February 27, 1886

No. 113.—Vol. III.
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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1886.
Those who have been accustomed to regard volcanoes such as Vesuvius or Etna as the one form of volcanic action, may be somewhat startled by the statement that lavas have sometimes been poured forth from fissures hundreds of miles in length, and have deluged vast tracts of country beneath sheets of molten rock, compared with which the puny lava-fields of Italy sink into insignificance. History, romance, and legend have been so long associated with the group of volcanoes overlooking the quiet Tyrrhenian Sea, that from the time when Pindar sung of the fire-floods of Etna, and Pliny died, too rashly investigating the great eruption of Vesuvius, till Scrope, Lyell, Von Buch, and Palmieri made them the centre of their researches, they have occupied too large a share of attention, and have been thus regarded as the full normal development of that volcanic activity of which they are but a phase, and only a minor phase. Hence, when, eighteen years ago, Richthofen described the great lava-plains of Western America, and attributed their origin to ejection from fissures, and not from vents, so firm a hold had been taken of the minds of geologists by nearly twenty centuries of observation of Vesuvius and its fellows, that his arguments were received with incredulity; and though they have been amply verified by subsequent investigations, and have afforded the clue to the interpretation of the vast series of volcanic rocks in other quarters of the globe, they have not been generally circulated, and few, outside the circle of geologists, are acquainted with them.
In this paper, we propose briefly to describe some of the most noted of these ‘fissure’—or as Richthofen called them—‘massive’ eruptions, selecting as types that on the Snake River in the United States, and those in India, Abyssinia, and the north-west of Europe; and finally, to glance at their possible connection with the form of volcanic excitement more frequently displayed.