200 THE FIRE-DAMP'S FAMILY CIECLE. 



Dr. Clanny of behaving dishonourably to Dr. Clanny, in 

 point of fact. This is a grave accusation; and as a super- 

 ficial view of the circumstances involved would tend in some 

 measure to support it, I shall do my best to place the evi- 

 dence in the right point of view. 



A person going into the safety-lamp market, and asking 

 for a ' Clanny,' at this time, would have an instrument given 

 to him so nearly resembling the lamp of Davy, that, coupling 

 the fact with the knowledge previously acquired, that Dr. 

 Clanny had constructed a safety-lamp anterior to the year 

 1812, he would glean some a priori evidence in support of 

 the charge of plagiarism. When informed, however, that the 

 Clanny lamp of 1812 was a very different sort of thing from 

 the Clanny lamp of 1857, the a priori evidence vanishes. 



I am no blind partisan of Davy, as will be seen by and 

 by ; but I feel he has been very unjustly dealt with in the 

 matter of the safety-lamp. 



Some years ago there was an exhibition at the Society 

 of Arts' rooms of all existing safety-lamps. Each was desig- 

 nated by the name of some inventor, and each (which is not 

 unusual) was set forth to be greatly superior to every other. 

 Now I believe I shall not err in asserting that one and all 

 of these several lamps relied for their safety principle wholly 

 or partially on wire gauze. 



Good or bad, whatever the influence of wire gauze, or 

 other form of short tubular system for cooling may be, the 

 discovery of that system, the application of it, belongs to 

 Davy. No matter whether the lamp be with glass or without 

 glass, whether it feeds itself with air above or below, if it 

 have one scrap of wire gauze in its construction, I call it a 

 Davy. Nay more, if it substitute for wire gauze perforated 

 plates or short tubes, applied with the specific end in view 

 of cooling inflammable matter below the point of incandes- 

 cence, I still call it a Davy. 



The Felling explosion of 1812 gave publicity to the safety- 



