SPRINGS OF INFLAMMABLE GAS. 373 



orifice. The same tubes are employed for illuminating 

 houses that are not paved. The smell of naphtha is of 

 course diffused through the house, but after any person is 

 accustomed to it it ceases to be disagreeable. The 

 inhabitants also employ this natural fire in calcining 

 lime. The quantity of naphtha procured in the plain to 

 the south-east of Badku is enormous. It is drawn from 

 wells, some of which yield from 1000 to 1500 Ibs. per day. 

 As soon as these wells are emptied, they fill again till the 

 naphtha rises to its original level. * 



Inflammable gases issuing from the earth have been 

 used both in the old and the new world for domestic 

 purposes. In the salt mine of Gottesgabe at Rheims, in 

 the county of Fecklenburg, there is a pit called the Pit of 

 the Wind, from which a constant current of inflammable 

 gas has issued for sixty years. M. Boeder, the inspector 

 of the mines, has used this gas for two years not only as 

 a light, but for all the purposes of domestic economy. In 

 the pits which are not worked he collects the gas and 

 conveys it in tubes to his house. It burns with a white 

 and brilliant flame, has a density of about 0*66, and con- 

 tains traces of carbonic acid gas and sulphuretted hydro- 

 gen.f 



Near the village of Fredonia in North America, on the 

 shores of Lake Erie, are a number of burning springs as 

 they are called. The inflammable gas which issues from 

 these springs is conveyed in pipes to the village, which is 

 actually lighted by them.j: 



In the year 1828, a copious spring of inflammable gas 

 was discovered in Scotland in the bed of a rivulet which 

 crosses the north road between Glasgow and Edinburgh, 

 c, little to the east of the seventh mile-stone from Glasgow 



* See Forster's Travels, and Kinneir's Gcog. Memoir. 

 f Edinburgh Journal of Science, No xv. p. 183. 

 i Id. Id. 



