254 PHILOSOPHICAL TRAN-SACTIONS. [anNO I746. 



Milan, I went 2 miles from thence to a nobleman's palace. The building is of 

 some length in the front, and has 1 wings jetting forward ; so that it wants only 

 one side of an oblong figure. About 100 paces before the house, there runs a 

 small brook, and that very slowly ; over which you pass from the house into the 

 garden. We carried some pistols with us, and, firing one of them, I heard 56 

 reiterations of the noise. The first 20 were with some distinction ; but then, as 

 the noise seemed to fly away, and answer at a greater distance, the repetition was 

 so doubled, that you could hardly count them all, seeming as if the principal 

 sound was saluted in its passage by reports on this and that side at the same time. 

 Some of our company reckoned above 6o reiterations when a louder pistol was 

 discharged. 



Part of a Letter from Mr. J. Durant, dated Neivcasl/e, Feb. Q, l673-4, to 

 Robert Boyle, Esq. F. R. S. concerning a Coal Mine taking Fire near New- 

 castle upon Tyne; also of the Blue Well; and of a Subterraneous Cavern in 

 Weredale; lately communicated by the same. N° 480, p. 221. 



The fire at first was occasioned by a candle, negligently placed by a pitman, 

 as he was working in a pit about 30 years ago. It was so small at first noticing, 

 that half-a-crown reward was denied to one, who for that price would have en- 

 gaged to extinguish it; now it has wasted land and mine, and grown so furious, 

 as no hopes of its ceasing are conceived, before the failure of its fuel. 



The grounds where it began belong to a village called Benwell, about a quarter 

 of a mile northward from the river Tyne ; whence, by a slow progress, and fre- 

 quent deviations east and west, it marched northward ; sometimes preying on the 

 coals nearer the surface of the earth, and then subverting houses and grounds 

 lying over it; sometimes on the deeper mines, and was conspicuous only by its 

 smoke and fire in the night. Now it rages, and has already caused great devas- 

 tation, in grounds belonging to a village called Fenham, near a mile northward 

 from the place where it first was kindled. 



Its eruptions at present are in many places, and various depths. I have, both 

 last winter and this, in frosty nights, for then it bums most furiously, occasionally 

 riding by, in near 20 places, seen its flames and pillars of smoke. That ever it 

 has ejected stones, or the like, I cannot, by information or observation, affirm; 

 the concreted salts we have from it being always found either candying the super- 

 crescent ftirze, or impacted in the surface of the earth, at its eruptions. 



There is a stream near this town, which on its banks in the summer time, as 

 also when evaporated over the fire, leaves behind it a blue powder. Its head is 

 thence called the Blue Well. There are some subterraneal grottos or caverns 

 in Weredale, about 20 miles south-west of this place; where, by a little hole 

 creeping into the side of a vast mountain, is entered a spacious cavity, chambered 



