328 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



different articles of food. The flame is put out 

 by merely plugging up the orifice. The same 

 tubes are employed for illuminating houses that 

 are not paved. The smell of naphtha is of course 

 diffused through the house : but after any person 

 is accustomed to it, it ceases to be disagreeable. 

 The inhabitants also employ this natural fire in 

 calcining lime. The quantity of naphtha procured 

 in the plain to the south-east of Badku is enor- 

 mous. It is drawn from wells, some of which 

 yield from 1,000 to l,5001bs. per day. As soon 

 as these wells are emptied, they fill again till the 

 naptha rises to its original level.* 



Inflammable gases issuing from the earth have 

 been used both in the old and the new world for 

 domestic purposes. In the salt mine of Gottes- 

 gabe, at Rheims, in the county of Fecklenburg, 

 there is a pit called the Pit of the Wind, from 

 which a constant current of inflammable gas has 

 issued for sixty years. M. Roeder, the inspector 

 of the mines, has used this gas for two years, not 

 only as a light, but for all the purposes of do- 

 mestic economy. In the pits which are not 

 worked, he collects the gas, and conveys it in 

 tubes to his house. It burns with a white and 

 brilliant flame, has a density of about 0.66, and 

 contains traces of carbonic acid gas and sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen.f 



Near the village of Fredonia, in North America, 

 on the shores of Lake Erie, are a number of 

 burning springs, as they are called. The in- 

 flammable gas which issues from these springs is 



* See Forster's Travels, and Kinneir's Geog. Memoir, 

 f Edinburgh Journal of Science, No. xv., p. 183. 



