lO Mr. Ricardo on Sir W. Cougre\;e*s Report fJutY, 



from gas escapinf^ in close confined places, under shop counters, 

 in vaults, dry wells, and places of that description, where the 

 explosion has been but trifling, and little mischief done. Indeed 

 if the danger be at all adequate to what Sir W. Congreve has 

 described, it is a matter of inconceivable surprise that so very 

 few accidents should have occurred. It appears to me that 

 more mischief is to be apprehended from the bursting of those 

 tanks which stand out of the ground, and indeed when they 

 were filled with coal tar, the most dreadful consequences would 

 have ensued from their giving way : the latter risk is, however, 

 happily removed. Sir W. Congreve's recommendations con- 

 cerning the size of the gasometers, the limiting the number in a 

 •particular space, the constructing them in the open air, may be 

 the very acme of prudence, but I should very much doubt their 

 necessity, and I am very sure of the very great inconvenience 

 and additional useless expence which their adoption would occa- 

 sion. It might be a very prudent and effectual precaution for a 

 person never to go on the water to secure himself from drown- 

 ing ; but there are few, I believe, who would not laugh at him 

 for adopting it. 



Sir W. Congreve gives a short account of the Oil Gas Works 

 at Oldford, and speaks favourably of the adoption of oil for the 

 purpose of gas lights. I was not aware that Sir W. Congreve 

 'had paid an official visit to those Works. Had I continued in 

 the neighbourhood, I should have been most happy to have 

 •attended him on the occasion, and have afforded him every 

 information he might have required. I think it necessary to 

 make one or two corrections of the statement given in the 

 Report. The capital advanced is 8000/. instead of GOOO/. This 

 of course includes every expenditure, law expences for obtaining 

 the Act, meters, &c. 8cc. The charge for gas is stated to be 

 505. per 1000 feet : from that, however, 5 per cent, has been 

 deducted oti account of the price oj oil, so that the real charge is 

 only 47s. Qd, instead of 505. In drawing a comparison between 

 the illuminating powers of oil and coal gas, he says it is about as ' 

 one to three ; that is, that one oil gas lamp will give as much 

 iight as three of coal gas. The difference between oil and coal 

 gas is not estimated in that way, because it must be a very 

 large lamp indeed that will consume an equal quantity of the 

 former as the latter. The holes through which the oil gas 

 passes are only the 60th part of an inch in diameter ; while 

 those of the coal ^as are, I believe, the 30th part, being four 

 times the area. Oil gas passing through a coal gas burner 

 under the same pressure emits a great deal of smoke ; and I have * 

 observed a very remarkable circumstance, which corroborates a 

 former observation of Mr. P. Taylor, that in burning oil gas or 

 coal gas through the large hole burners, more than double the 

 quantity of the latter is consumed than the former. In the 

 -course of my experiments, I applied one of the common street 



