Comparative View of Circumstances attending some of the Explosions in Coal Mines

Abstract

I am not about to deliver, on this occasion, a lecture on the ventilation of coal mines; although I think that it would be highly useful to viewers and other superintendents, if, without expecting to arrive thereby at any nostrum or secret, they listened occasionally to a plain statement of the most important facts respecting fire-damp, choke-damp, atmospheric air, combustion, rarefaction, and other agents in those frightful accidents against which they have to guard. Still less have I either nostrum or secret to reveal. But in the course of preparing two or three such lectures, not yet delivered, some circumstances presented themselves, which, however, singly, well known or obvious, have scarcely met, in connection with each other, with all the attention which they deserve. The report of Sir Henry De la Beche and Dr. Playfair,* it is true, is so able and so comprehensive, that it supersedes much which I might otherwise remark. But several minute and accurate accounts of explosions of later dates have appeared since their general report or essay was written. These enable me to draw inferences from a greater number and variety of well-recorded instances than they had then before them. Many circumstances are only incidentally mentioned, or to be gathered from casual remarks, and are therefore by no means plain on once reading. The result on my mind is a persuasion that tendencies to a dangerous condition exist in mines reputed to be comparatively safe, and that these tendencies are so numerous and vary so ...