ITS 



Spontaneous Combustion. 



III. 



Some cotton used in cleaning the cabin of 

 the ship Birminofham, became partially filled 

 with fiax-seed oil, and after some time it ig- 

 nited. An express experiment proved that 

 cotton thus impregnated would inflame in two 

 hours. (New York, 1831.) 



Cotton rags, while delivering from the 

 cellar of a store, 24 Broad street, New York, 

 were found oi; fire. Oil had been spilt on 

 them. (.Tune, 1834.) 



Mr. Durant's large balloon, varnished for 

 the finst time, exposed to the sun through the 

 day, and rolled up in the evening, and de- 

 posited upon chairs in a house in Jersey city, 

 was found the next morning entirely con- 

 sumed. The varnish was composed of oil, 

 turpentine and caoutchouc. (June, 1832.) 



Mr. Atkinson of Ellicott's mills near Bal- 

 timore, stated that flax-seed oil spilt on 

 [wood] ashes in an iron kettle, caused the 

 ashes to inflame in twenty-four hours. He 

 made an experiment to te.st the fact, with 

 success. Mr. Patterson, President of the 

 United State.s' Mint, repeated the experiment 

 with cold hickory ashes, and one pint of flax- 

 seed oil; in forty-six hours after, the mixture 

 was fairly ignited, and in a short time emit- 

 ted flame, which continued upwards of an 

 hour. After the flame had ceased, the igni- 

 tion continued for eighteen hours, and the 

 ashes were then poured out of the vessel. 

 (1820.) 



* A canvass recently painted with flax-seed 

 oil, and then dried and rolled close, took fire 

 after being three hours exposed to the sun on 

 the deck of the Schr. Olive, at Troy, New 

 York. (August, 182.0.) 



A piece of old packing-sheet, which had 

 lain long about an oil and color warehouse, 

 and was besmeared with difteront kinds of 

 vegetable oils, on being thrown behind .some 

 casks pretty much confined from the air, in- 

 flamed. — Edinburgh Phil, Jovr. vol. vii. p. 

 219. 



A cask of oat meal left from May to Au- 

 gust in a kitchen in Glasgow, caught fire and 

 was totally consumed together witii the bar- 

 rel. — Thomson.'' s Annals, vol. xvi. p. 390. 



A parcel of hops well dried, were put into 

 a home-spun cotton gown and placed on a 

 heap of cotton seed ; after three months they 

 inflamed. Cotton it was remarked has fre- 

 quently been known to take fire spontaneous- 

 ly in a moist ;ind h'-atcd atmosphere. — Mil- 

 t07i, N. Carol 1 710. paper. (1824.) 



Certain ochres ground in flax-seed oil, in- 

 flamed during the act of trituration. 



Alder charcoal has taktm fire in the ware- 

 houses in which it was stored.* One of 

 sixty-three c:tsks of lampblack on Ixiard the 

 ship Catherine, bound to India from England, 



* B. G. Sage. Walker's Archives, vol. iii., p. 80. 



ignited, but was discovered by the fiimes be- 

 fore it had burst into a flame. — Old Monthly 

 Mag. Lon., 1827, p. 91. 



iVet Cotton.— The ship Earl of Eldon, in 

 August, 1834, was set on fire, by reason of 

 having shipped cotton in the ram at Bombay. 



A similar occurrence took place in 1836, 

 on board a vessel which had taken in cotton 

 at Apalachicola, Florida, during rain. 



A piece of red cedar about two ounces in 

 weight, broken in two, and laid upon the 

 shelf of the store of Mr. Adam Reigart in 

 Lancaster, Penn. inflamed after two years 

 had elapsed, in June, 1834. It was part of a 

 tree found in excavating the deep cut of the 

 rail road, at the '-Gap in the Mine Ridge," 

 Lancaster County, thirty feet below the sur- 

 face. The combustion was proceeding so 

 rapidly, that the shelf would have been in a 

 few minutes on fire, and it evidently com- 

 menced in the interior of the wood, as some 

 of the outer fibres were sound. — JlazarfVs 

 Register of Pennsylvania, vol. xiii, p. 399. 



Ilaussman relates that several dozens of 

 skeins of cotton, dyed red, and impregnated 

 with an alkaline solution of alumina, with 

 excess of boiled linseed oil, were placed on a 

 straw-bottomed chair, under a window, and 

 at midnight they inflamed.* 



A heap of horse manure inflamed in the 

 month of May, 1822, at Sharon, in Connecti- 

 cut. The fire was two feet in circumference. 

 American Journal of Science, vol. v. p. 201.f 



That manure will take fire spontaneously 

 is rendered probable by a recent occurrence 

 in Baltimore. In the " Patriot" newspaper 

 of that city, of September 26, it is stated that 

 " the alarm of fire on Sunday, was occasioned 

 by spontaneous combustion in a deposite of 

 manure from the stable on the rear of the 

 premises of Edward Patter.'^on, Esq., in South 

 Gay street, near Market street. The situa- 

 tion of the place forbids the idea of any other 

 origin; and it was generally believed by 

 those who saw it to be a case of spontaneous 

 combustion." Who that rt^fiects upon the 

 chemical contents of stable manure can 

 doubt that it contains the principles of com- 

 bustion! 



It is a miserable thing to be injured by one 

 of whom we dare not complain. 



* !Iis tlieory of thi.s is as follows : " In al) cases 

 wlioro the oxygen of the atinosphirf; is rapidly at- 

 ir.icted and al>sor'bed. the caloric, which simvcs as a 

 base to the ixygen, giving it the qunlilios of gas, or 

 ehistin properties, is disengaged in snch abundance, 

 that if the absorbing bodies ore siiscrptibU- of taking 

 fire, or if roinhusiible bodiesare in the nciuhbonrliood, 

 a spoiitaneons intlanintation will take place." — .dn- 

 nalct ilr CI: mic. M\>. I II. T:lioc/i, Vol. X-'. 



t It afip'iir.'d suhsi'qiiently. that this rase of siip- 

 ])osi'(l spontaneous cuMibiiftion was the work of an iit- 

 c(Uidiary ; the couiininiicaiinn of both facts was fruoi 

 the same person, a respectable physician.— JB<i(7or. 



