In one of the northern ravines of Madeira by Porto da Cruz some masses of a coarsely crystalline Essexite are exposed to view; this rock is evidently the deep-seated representative of the Trachydoleritic and Nepheline basalt lavas. Fragments of a sodalite-syenite have also been found at Soca in the same neighbourhood.
In the eastern part of the island several small crater rings are to be seen; their rims are formed of spheroidal basalt, while within the craters themselves masses of bauxite are found accompanied by evidences of fumerolic action.
In the sections afforded by the ravines, which strike north and south from the central ridge of Madeira to the sea, the nucleus of the island is seen to consist of a confused mass of more or less stratified rock, upon which rest beds of tuff, scoriae and lava, in the shape of basalt, trap and trachyte, the whole traversed by dykes. These beds are thinnest near the central axis; as they approach the coast they become thicker and less intersected by dykes.
In various parts are elevated tracts of comparatively level ground. These are supposed to have been formed by the meeting of numerous streams of lava flowing from cones and points of eruption in close proximity, various ejectamenta assisting at the same time to fill up inequalities. Deep down in some of the lateral ravines may be seen ancient cones of eruption which have been overwhelmed by streams of melted matter issuing from the central region, and afterwards exposed to view by the same causes that excavated the ravines. These ravines may be regarded as having been formed at first by subterranean movements, both gradual and violent, which dislocated the rocks and cut clefts through which streams flowed to the sea. In course of time the waters, periodically swollen by melted snows and the copious rains of winter, would cut deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains, and would undermine the lateral cliffs, until the valleys became as large as we now find them. Even the Curral, which from its rounded shape and its position in the centre of the island has been usually deemed the ruins of a crater, is thought to be nothing more than a valley scooped out in the way described. The rarity of crateriform cavities in Madeira is very remarkable. There exists, however, to the east of Funchal, on a tract 2000 ft. high, the Lagoa, a small but perfect crater, 500 ft. in diameter, and with a depth of 150 ft.; and there is another, which is a double one, in the district known as Fanal, in the north-west of Madeira, nearly 5000 ft. above the sea. The basalt, of which much of the outer part of the island is composed, is of a dark colour and a tough texture, with small disseminated crystals of olivine and augite. It is sometimes full of vesicular cavities, formed by the expansion of imprisoned gases. A rudely columnar structure is very often seen in the basalt, but there is nothing so perfect as the columns of Staffa or the Giant’s Causeway. The trachytic rocks are small in quantity compared with those of the basaltic class. The tufa is soft and friable, and generally of a yellow colour; but where it has been overflowed by a hot stream of lava it has assumed a red colour. Black ashes and fragments of pumice are sometimes found in the tufaceous strata.
There are no metallic ores, nor has any sulphur been found; but a little iron pyrites and specular iron are occasionally met with. The basalt yields an excellent building-stone, various qualities of which are quarried near Camara de Lobos, five or six miles west of Funchal.
In Porto Santo the trachytic rocks bear a much greater proportion to the basaltic than in Madeira. An adjacent islet is formed of tuffs and calcareous rock, indicating a submarine origin, upon which supramarine lavas have been poured. The older series contains corals and shells (also of the Miocene Tertiary epoch), with water-worn pebbles, cemented together by carbonate of lime, the whole appearing to have been a coral reef near an ancient beach. The calcareous rock is taken in large quantities to Funchal, to be burnt into lime for building purposes.
Climate.—Observations taken at Funchal Observatory (80 ft. above sea-level) in the last twenty years of the 19th century showed that the mean annual temperature is about 65° F. The mean minimum for the coldest part of the year (October to May inclusive) does not fall below 55°, and the average daily variation of temperature in the same period does not exceed 10°. Madeira thus has a remarkably mild climate, though it lies only 10° north of the Tropic of Cancer. This mildness is due to the surrounding ocean, from which the atmosphere obtains a large supply of watery vapour. The mean humidity of the air is about 75 (saturation = 100). The prevalent winds are from the north or from a few points east or west of north, but these winds are much mitigated on the south coast by the central range of mountains. The west wind usually brings rain. That from the east is a dry wind. A hot and dry wind, the leste of the natives, occasionally blows from the east-south-east, the direction of the Sahara, and causes the hill region to be hotter than below; but even on the coast the thermometer under its influence sometimes indicates 93°. The leste is often accompanied by sandstorms. As the thermometer has never been known to fall as low as 46° at Funchal, frost and snow are there wholly unknown; but snow falls on the mountains once or twice during the winter, very seldom, however, below the altitude of 2000 ft. Thunderstorms are rare, and scarcely ever violent.
Madeira has long had a high reputation as a sanatory resort for persons suffering from diseases of the chest. Notwithstanding the ever-increasing competition of other winter resorts, a considerable number of invalids, especially English and German, winter at Funchal.
Fauna.—No species of land mammal is indigenous to the Madeiras. Some of the early voyagers indeed speak of wild goats and swine, but these animals must have escaped from confinement. The rabbit, black rat, brown rat and mouse have been introduced. The first comers encountered seals, and this amphibious mammal (Monachus albiventer) still lingers at the Desertas. Amongst the thirty species of birds which breed in these islands are the kestrel, buzzard and barn owl, the blackbird, robin, wagtail, goldfinch, ring sparrow, linnet, two swifts, three pigeons, the quail, red-legged partridge, woodcock, tern, herring gull, two petrels and three puffins. Only one species is endemic, and that is a wren (Regulus madeirensis), but five other species are known elsewhere only at the Canaries. These are the green canary (Fringilla butyracea, the parent of the domesticated yellow variety), a chaffinch (Fringilla tintillon), a swift (Cypselus unicolor), a wood pigeon (Columba trocaz) and a petrel (Thalassidroma Bulwerii). There is also a local variety of the blackcap, distinguishable from the common kind by the extension in the male of the cap to the shoulder. About seventy other species have been seen from time to time in Madeira, chiefly stragglers from the African coast, many of them coming with the leste wind.