Dfxember 24, 1914] 



NATURE 



461 



COLLIERY EXPLOSIONS AND COAL-DUST. 



IKDER the title of 

 their Means of 

 Colliery .Guardian Co. 

 collected into a small 



UNDER the title of "Great Colliery Explosions and 

 th.ir \Ipan<; nf Prevention "' (London : The 

 Ltd.), Dr. W. Galloway has 

 volume a number of papers 

 contributed by him between the years 1872 and 1908 

 to various publications ; these were so scattered that 

 their logical sequence was not always easy to trace, 

 and they gain greatly by being presented in their order 

 and gathered within the covers of a small volume. 



The first two papers deal with the connection be- 

 tween colliery explosions and the state of the baro- 

 meter, and showed, what no one probably doubts 

 to-dav, that there is a greater danger of firedamp 

 explosions with a falling barometer than under any 

 other atmospheric conditions. The next paper gives 

 an account of a series of experiments which demon- 

 strated that a violent atmospheric concussion, such as 

 that produced by a shot, can force flame through the 

 gauze of a safety-lamp, so that a lamp, which would 

 be quite safe in a quiescent explosive atmosphere, may 

 initiate an explosion if the same atmosphere is violently 

 disturbed. This fact, like those above referred to, is a 

 matter of such common knowledge to-day amongst 

 miners that they are apt to forget that there ever was 

 a time when it was not known, and it is as well that 

 they should have at hand a reminder as to who it was 

 that first discovered this very important fact. 



The remaining papers are perhaps of higher interest 

 than those already mentioned, as they all deal with 

 the part that coal-dust plays in propagating colliery 

 explosions. For a long time the coal-dust danger was 

 either neglected or flatly denied even by the highest 

 mining authorities, and Dr. Galloway deserves the 

 greatest credit for the part he has played in forcing 

 its recognition upon the mining community. It is 

 evident from a perusal of the papers here collected 

 that it was only gradually that the"" gravity of the 

 danger of coal-dust explosions impressed itself upon 

 Dr. Galloway himself, and that it was quite a long 

 time before he could convince himself that coal-dust 

 was dangerous in the entire absence of fire-damp. 

 Thus in 1876 he disagrees with the opinions expressed 

 by a French engineer, ]NL Vital, who held that finely 

 divided coal-dust may of itself alone {i.e. without fire- 

 damp) give rise to disasters, and he states his definite 

 conclusion that "a mixture of air and coal-dust is not 

 inflammable at ordinary pressure and temperature " 

 (p. 57), and goes on to show that when as little as 

 0892 per cent, by volume of fire-damp is added the 

 mixture becomes inflammable. Already at this date, 

 however. Dr. Galloway advocated the watering of the 

 roadways in collieries so as to keep down the dust. 

 In 1879 Dr. Galloway had apparently modified his 

 views to some extent, for he then wrote : " It is prob- 

 able, moreover, that some kinds of coal-dust require 

 less fire-damp than others to render their mixture with 

 air inflammable ; and it is conceivable that still other 

 kinds mav form inflammable mixtures with pure air " 

 (p. y3). In his first paper in 1882 he still seems to 

 consider the presence of a minute proportion of fire- 

 damp, too small to be detected by a safety-lamp in the 

 ordinary way, which he calls the "latent" fire-damp, 

 indispensable to the formation of a dust explosion, but 

 he continued to experiment, and in his second 1882 

 paper he wrote that his experiments " show conclu- 

 sively, I think, that fire-damp is altogether unnecessary, 

 when the scale on which the experiments are made is 

 large enough" (p. m). It is important to note that 

 Dr. Gallowav reached this conclusion after six years 

 of continuous experiments, in direct contradiction to 

 his earlier views on the subject, and this fact should 

 of itself have inspired confidence in the matured 

 opinions that he expressed. 



NO. 2356, VOL. 94] 



The remaining papers in this volume are devoted to 

 an elaboration of this coal-dust theory, but though of 

 undoubted importance, they are less so than the above- 

 quoted series in which Dr. Galloway showed by direct 

 experiment that coal-dust and air form an explosive 

 mixture even in the absence of inflammable gas, and the 

 fact that he was the first to furnish experimental proof 

 of this has established his reputation as an original, 

 accurate and painstaking investigator of colliery ex- 

 plosions ; this little volume shows clearly enough the 

 extent to which he has laid the coal-mining community 

 not only of this but of all other countries under a deep 

 debt of gratitude. H. L. 



THE EDUCATION IN LONDON OF REFU- 

 GEES FROM FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 



A FEW weeks ago (Nature, November 26) we 

 -^~*- gave an account of what is being done to estab- 

 lish an informal Belgian university at Cambridge, for 

 students of the University of Louvain and other 

 universities affected by existing military operations. 

 Both the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have, 

 so far as we understand, offered a generous hos- 

 pitality on a large scale to both the start and students 

 of Belgium universities, but .while affording them 

 every facility for quiet study, have not attempted to 

 bring them systematically within their own system. 

 The University of London, on the other hand, is 

 putting at the service of refugee students not merely 

 the teaching facilities of its two incorporated colleges, 

 but also the right to enter its degree courses and to 

 obtain its degrees on exceptionally favourable terms. 

 It is allowing a partial or total remission of fees 

 both for full teaching courses in expensive laboratory 

 subjects, such as engineering and preliminary and 

 intermediate medicine, and for entrance to examina- 

 tions. It has further made special concessions as to 

 both the matriculation and intermediate examinations, 

 which will make it possible for the students to answer 

 questions in French, and have their knowledge tested 

 on the lines of education they have previouslv received 

 in their own universities. If the Privy Council ap- 

 prove of the Amendment of Statutes which the Senate 

 of the University is referring to them, a clever student 

 who has come over to London from Belgian or 

 French universities this autumn, will be able to pass 

 the examinations in lieu of matriculation and inter- 

 mediate by the early spring, and enter at once on his 

 final course. 



This interesting experiment to enable deserving 

 students of the allied nations to obtain actual English 

 degrees entails extraordinarily severe work on the 

 administrative and teaching staff of the colleges. 

 King's College has seventy-four of such students, 

 L'niversity College sixty-seven, and the Imperial Col- 

 lege a certain number. None of them knew English 

 to start with, and special classes have had to be 

 arranged to teach it them. The courses in foreign 

 universities differ greatly from those of English uni- 

 versities, as well as from each other, and infinite care 

 has had to be taken to discover the exact stage in 

 each subject which a given student has reached. In 

 engineering, for instance, in which King's College 

 alone has iforty-two such students, the standard of 

 applied mathematics is much lower in the earlier 

 stages in Belgium than in England, while that in 

 pure mathematics is higher. Even allowing for the 

 assistance of the Belgian professors who are being" 

 called into council, it is not above the mark to say 

 that the time taken over each refugee student is as 

 much as that over ten English students. Apart from 

 the academic work, the hospitality which the senior 

 common rooms of University and King's Colleges 



