508 Effects attending the Blowing up 



heard of me last at Middleton limekilns, breaking stones 

 and picking up petrifactions of various kinds : you must now 

 follow me a little further north, to Stobs's Powder Mill. 



It was no powder mill when first I knew it, but a barley mill ; 

 it has, however, been a celebrated powder manufactory for the 

 last thirty years. I could give you many accounts of the many 

 explosions of these powder mills, and of the many deaths occa- 

 sioned by them ; but this would not properly belong to natu- 

 ral history, as the deaths were any thing but natural deaths, 

 else I " could some tales unfold would harrow up thy soul :'* 

 such as Mr. Hunter, one of the proprietors, being struck 

 by a stone on the shoulder, which carried off his naked arm 

 to a great distance, without shattering the sleeve of his coat 

 much ; and how his arm was not missed till he was carried 

 into his house, set in his chair, and his friends endeavouring 

 to bathe his face and hands in cold water ! And how another 

 man was burnt so that he kept begging his friends to unbut- 

 ton his clothes for hours after there were neither clothes nor 

 skin on him ; and how he lived from eight o'clock in the 

 morning till six in the evening, in this state, before he died ! 

 And how his companion was blown into so many pieces that 

 his heart and liver were found in different fields ! — his 

 tongue was found on a door-step some distance from the 

 other fragments of his head ! This was looked upon by some 

 as a summary punishment for profane swearing, as that unfor- 

 tunate tongue had been much addicted to such abomination : 

 for my own part, 1 cannot see that the tongue was any more 

 unfortunate or severely punished than the other parts of his 

 body. But all this, as I said before, has nothing to do with 

 natural history, only it may serve as a prelude to what I may 

 suggest respecting the geology of the earth ; and I must join 

 with Shakspeare's fop, and say. 



It is a pity, so it is. 



That villanous saltpetre should be digg'd 

 Out of the bowels of the hanuless earth," &c. 



But I am going to infer that the bowels of the earth may not be 

 so harmless as it is generally supposed ; for accumulations of this 

 same villanous saltpetre may, by a natural process of chemis- 

 try, at certain ages of the earth, explode, and shatter the whole 

 or a part of this globe, and thereby produce the various phe- 

 nomena of geology which so much puzzle us poor sand-blind 

 mortals. Nevertheless, this supposition does not answer all 

 my notions for the phenomena of geology. We must know 

 that there are myriads of globes in the universe besides ours ; 

 some of them may be more overcharged with saltpetre, or 



