TOL. XII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 9Qg 



in want of fresh air, the fire-damp gradually began to breed, and to appear in 

 crevices and slits of the coal, where water had lain before the opening of the 

 mine, with a small blueish flame continually moving, but not out of its first 

 seat, unless the workmen came and held their candle to it, and then being 

 weak, the blaze of the candle would drive it with a sudden hiss away to another 

 crevice, where it would soon after appear, blazing and moving as before. This 

 was the first knowledge of it in this work, which the workmen made but a sport 

 of, and so partly neglected it, till it had got some strength, when one morning 

 the first collier that went down going forwards in the witchet with his candle in 

 hand, the damp presently darted out violently at his candle, when the blast 

 struck the man down, and scorched him so as to disable him for working some 

 time after. Some other small warnings it gave them, which induced them to em- 

 ploy a man on purpose, more resolute than the rest, to go down a while before 

 them every morning, to chase it from place to place, and so to weaken it. His 

 usual manner was, to put on the worst rags he had, and to wet them well in 

 water, then as soon as he came within the danger of it, he fell grovelling down 

 on his belly and so crept forward, holding in one hand a long wand or pole, 

 having fixed at the end of it burning candles, which he reached by degrees to- 

 wards it ; then the damp would fly at them, and if it missed of putting them 

 out, it would quench itself with a blast, and leave an ill-scented smoke behind it. 

 Thus they dealt with it till they had wrought the coal down to the bottom, the 

 water following, and not remaining as before in the body of it among sulphure- 

 ous and brassy metal that is in some veins of the coal. The fire-damp was not 

 seen or heard of otherwise, till the latter end of the year 1675, which happened 

 as follows : — 



After long working of this five yards coal, they discovered on the rising 

 grounds, where the signs of the coal and the coal itself came near the day, that 

 another roach of coal at 14 yards depth beneath the former, which proved to be 

 34- yards thick; and a profitable coal, but something more sulphureous than the 

 other, and extended under all the former works. As they sunk the lower part 

 of it many appearances of the fire-damp occurred in watery crevices of the rocks 

 flashing and darting from side to side of the pit, and showing rainbow-colour- 

 like on the surface of the water in the bottom ; but on drawing up of the water 

 with buckets, which stirred the air in the pit, it would leave burning, till the 

 colliers at work with their breath and sweat and the smoke of their candles 

 thickened the air in the pit, then it would appear again, and sometimes they 

 lighted their candles in it when they went out; and so in this pit it did no 

 further harm. 



But on sinking a pit within the hollows or deads of the upper work, at 1 6 or 



