Message #207684

[Jennifer Murdoch]

The ordinary rules for estimating the age of rocks by compactness can be applied at Easter Island only hypothetically, because the scoriform and more dense specimens are found immediately contiguous to one another. In places they are quite conglomerated, as though older formations had been disturbed by volcanic convulsions, while a new flow of lava enveloped and sealed the whole into a heterogeneous mass. During our short stay on the islands there was no opportunity to measure the lava flow or to make investigations of that nature.