110 NATURAL SCIENCE [August 
into a cavity. An inflammable gas immediately ascended, which got 
ignited by the lights of the workmen. Two men were immediately 
killed, and as an eye-witness says, the gas burned slowly up the 
well till it came near the top, when coming in contact with the 
outer air, it burst out into a sheet of flame, some 20 feet high. It 
then slowly burned itself out. |The water in the well was useless, 
and Mr Nicholls had the well filled up. 
This seems to have been an instance of an inflammable gas 
occurring in association with strata containing a rock-oil, the 
gas itself accumulating in a cavity, or what is called by the 
Americans a ‘pocket. It serves to show that it is unwise for 
well-sinkers to use artificial lights at the bottom of a well when 
boring for water, except perhaps in properly constructed mining- 
lamps. 
Another somewhat interesting occurrence took place near Tice- 
hurst Road, Sussex, about six or seven years ago. There is a certain 
low-lying field, called the ‘ Bogs Brook,’ close to the Ticehurst Road 
Station of the South-Eastern Railway. It is a marshy spot, and 
sometimes large bubbles of inflammable gas continuously rise and 
break on the surface of the pools. One Sunday in a particularly 
dry summer when the bog was dried up, some boys were about to 
enjoy a clandestine smoke of tobacco, when a match thrown down 
suddenly ignited something believed to be inflammable gas. The 
boys ran away, and the whole field was soon a mass of flame; the 
peat of the bog also took fire. - I am told that the spot, which is in 
view of the railway, was visited by thousands of people at the time; 
it burned for a week or more, when some heavy rains soaked the 
land and put ont the fire. 
These subjects, although interesting, have but slight interest as 
compared with the more important occurrences of inflammable gas 
coming from artesian borings, with a continuous flow during months 
and years, and existing under a high degree of pressure. Inflam- 
mable gas is mentioned by Mr Henry Willett, F.G.S., in his account 
of the famous Sub-Wealden boring at Netherfield in 1875, as occur- 
ring in the Purbeck Strata, and at a short distance above certain 
strata in the upper Kimmeridge Clays, recorded to be very rich 
in petroleum. This seems to be the first record we have of a class 
of gas which has now again been -met with in East Sussex. Of 
course I do not now speak of gases emanating from petroleum at 
high temperatures, but of certain gases usually found in a free state 
in association with petroleum, and perhaps, therefore, owing their 
origin to some common causes and conditions. 
An inflammable gas was met with in a boring made by Messrs 
Le Grand & Sutcliffe (the celebrated hydraulic engineers) at the 
Heathfield Hotel, Waldron, Sussex, in rocks at a horizon very little 
