DIRECTION OF THE FISSURES OF ERUPTION.

The volcanic orifices in this group cannot be considered as indiscriminately scattered.Three great craters on Albermarle Island form a well-marked line, extending N.W.by N.and S.E.by S.Narborough Island, and the great crater on the rectangular projection of Albemarle Island, form a second parallel line.To the east, Hood’s Island, and the islands and rocks between it and James Island, form another nearly parallel line, which, when prolonged, includes Culpepper and Wenman Islands, lying seventy miles to the north.The other islands lying further eastward, form a less regular fourth line.Several of these islands, and the vents on Albemarle Island, are so placed, that they likewise fall on a set of rudely parallel lines, intersecting the former lines at right angles; so that the principal craters appear to lie on the points where two sets of fissures cross each other.The islands themselves, with the exception of Albemarle Island, are not elongated in the same direction with the lines on which they stand.The direction of these islands is nearly the same with that which prevails in so remarkable a manner in the numerous archipelagoes of the great Pacific Ocean.

Finally, I may remark, that amongst the Galapagos Islands there is no one dominant vent much higher than all the others, as may be observed in many volcanic archipelagoes: the highest is the great mound on the south- western extremity of Albemarle Island, which exceeds by barely a thousand feet several other neighbouring craters.