Abstract
In coal-mines in which the temperature of the workings is considerably higher than the mean annual temperature at the surface, there is usually a layer of rubbish on the floor of the roadways and air-ways, which consists, in some places, almost entirely of dry coal-dust, and in others of coal-dust mixed with small pieces of coal and stone. If it could be shown, therefore, that a mixture of air and coal-dust is inflammable at ordinary pressure and temperature, there would be no difficulty in accounting for the extent and violence of many explosions which have occurred in mines in which no large accumulations of firedamp were known to exist; for it is only necessary to suppose that a sudden gust of wind (originated, for example, by the explosion of a small accumulation of firedamp) had swept through the adjoining galleries, raising a cloud of dust into the air, and then all the other phenomena would follow in regular order. The flame of the originally inflammable mixture would pass directly into the newly formed one, expanding its volume; the disturbance would be propagated over an ever widening area, until that area might possibly become coextensive with the workings themselves; and the consequences would be the same as if the whole space had been filled with an inflammable mixture before the disturbance began.
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