tlie Adtianople Tied, and other fixed Colcurs. 341 



commend the use of it, because it exposed me to the danger 

 of a conflagration in the followin!', nianaei : 



With a view to discover whether red cotton, which had 

 not the requisite fixity, could acquire it by impregnating it 

 with an alkahne sohuion of alunime, with excess of boiled 

 linseed oil, and drying it, and then boiling it a very long 

 time in hrau water, I mixed the alkaline solution of alumme 

 in the proportions of an eighth, a twelfth, and a sixteenth 

 part of boiled linseed oil. \ then immersed in this mixture^ 

 some dozens of skains of dyed cotton, which, after being 

 dried in the open air for a wliole day the preceding sunniier, 

 were placed ui:der the window of my cabinet, on a straw- 

 bottomed chair. Being that day indisposed, I went to be4 

 at seven in the evening, without any uneasiness in regard to 

 my cotton. My children, about an hour after, went into 

 my cabinet to look for some sheets of paper, and observed 

 in the cotton neither heat nor any smell of combustion. All 

 the workmen of -the manufactory were in a state of pro- 

 found sleep, when one of the w atchmen of the bleajh- 

 iield, seeing my cabinet all illuminated, <;alledout " Fire !" 

 and awaked us between twelve and one o'clock in the 

 mornina:. My sons, knowing that I was riot able to get 

 out of bed, and unwilling to lose time in searching for the 

 key, burst open the -door of the cabinet, which is an unin- 

 habited and detached building. They entered, notwith- 

 *tandin<i; the tliick smok'e and insupportable odour of the 

 .oily conjbustion, and found the cotton and chair so much 

 on fire, tliat the flame, which rose to the ceiling, had already 

 broken the glass and burnt the frame of the window. They 

 ■immediately concluded, that this fire could arise only from 

 the spontaneous inflammation of the cotton impregnated 

 iind covered with boiled oil, since no person had entered 

 the cabinet either with a lighted pipe, or v\ ith any other 

 matters in a state of combustion. Observing that several 

 persons in the manufactory rcfu-cd to assent to this expla- 

 iiatFon, I again impregnated some dozens of skains or old 

 cotton, which had been badly dyed, in the same manner as 

 the burnt cotton. I then dried' them in the open air ; and 

 hceing that the weather threatened rain, I exposed them on 

 a rope, extended above the court, desiring one ot^ the night 

 watchmen to look at the cotton every quarter of an hour, 

 and to throw it into a bucket of water as soon as he should 

 see it begin to become heated. But as the man could not 

 conceive the possibility or die spontaneous inflammation of 

 cotton, as he himself acknowledged, he went his rounds 

 without so much as looking towards the court. At length, 

 Y 3 howe\cr 



