given on a late Trial. 341 



of the vapour expanded, and threw out the oil ; it rose four or 

 five feet from the end of the pipe, and struck the ceiling ; it 

 was a sort of irregular fountain ; the oil ran into the fire, and 

 the fire was very much increased by it at the time this boiling 

 happened." On being asked to shew the effect of the explosion 

 of the naphtha, he lighted a small piece of taper, and put it into 

 the phial of what he called naphtha, which, after one or two 

 attempts, produced a feeble lambent flame, of a bluish yellow 

 colour, which extinguished the taper and immediately expired — 

 a most offensive smell being at the same time perceived through- 

 out the court. On being asked, if the inflammation that took 

 place when he collected the oil vapour in a vessel was accom- 

 panied with noise ? he replied, " without noise ;" and added, 

 " You may make explosion without noise, and, generally speak- 

 ing, it would be a silent one." He said he thought the process 

 of heating sugar by oil more hazardous than the ordinary mode, 

 and especially from the production of the naphtha at 410°, and 

 from the danger of the oil boiling over*. On being asked the 

 construction of the boiler in which he made his experiments, he 

 said " the boiler was not enclosed with bricks, and the oil ran 

 into the fire." " Then," said a juryman, " their fire could not 

 have been made on the same principle as that," (pointing to the 

 model of the apparatus used at the sugar-house) ; and another 

 juryman added, *' the experiments of this witness do not apply 

 to such a boiler as this." 



Observations. Mr. Faraday stated, that in his own first 

 experiment he could not obtain inflammable vapour, even on 

 the surface of the heated oil at less than a temperature of 490°, 

 which is a striking contradiction to the first witness on the same 

 side of the question, who asserted that he procured it, at the end 

 of a tubcy at 280°. It was improper, I conceive, to say that " if 



• If Mr. Faraday had attended to the habitudes of boiling oil, he wouhi 

 not have spoken of the danger of its boiling over, as it does not rise in the 

 pan, except us is occasioned by the gradual expansion from change of tem- 

 perature ; but always boils with an horizontal motion. 



