OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 315 



the point a liquid would reach, falling from the intersection of 

 a line drawn from the can's place perpendicular to the shelf 

 with the roof, must have been very near the edge of the pail. 

 Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how just liquid 

 enough to have fired the outside and inside of one of the 

 pails, and not the shelf or surrounding surfaces, could have 

 come from any other point than one above. 



" This view leaves no statement of the surviving inmates, 

 or fact of the appearances as presented after the accident, 

 without a legitimate explanation. It is, perhaps, difficult to 

 believe that a coal would have sprung from the stove, through 

 a space of six feet, with such precision as to inflame the fluid 

 about the nose of the can. But six feet is not an unusual 

 flight for a fragment of coal from snapping wood. Nothing 

 intervened to obstruct its course. The kettle was tipped so 

 as to give it a ready passage, and even presented a reflecting 

 surface that would aid in sending some indirect sparks in the 

 required direction. The bit of coal would be glowing from 

 its friction with the air, and in the precise condition to insure 

 explosion on its arrival at the neck. It is, therefore, no more 

 wonderful that the spark should take the precise direction it 

 did, than that the can should have been placed in its path- 

 way. 



" In conclusion, then, it may be stated in regard to the 

 Salem case, — 



" 1. That the evidence does not require us to believe in the 

 spontaneous explosion of burning-fluid ; or 



" 2. That the explosion was any thing else than one of a 

 mixture of burning-fluid vapor and atmospheric air, by bring- 

 ing in contact with it an incandescent body." 



Professor Peirce referred to Faraday's investigations re- 

 specting the ignition and subsequent explosion of explosive 

 gases, induced by their adhesion to clean plates of platinum 

 and other metals, and inquired whether the explosion at Salem 

 might not have originated from the same cause. 



Professor Horsford thought that the surface of the can 

 could not have been sufficiently clean to produce that efiect. 



