198 Mr. Budjdle's Account of the Explosion in JarrGw Colliery. 



No. 2. 



It was evident that a quantity of inflammable air had been contained 

 in this cavity, in a high state of compressure, and that on the Coal being 

 worked away, till it was no longer equal to resist the elastic force of the 

 compressed gas, the gas had escaped, with a sort of explosion, displac- 

 ing the block of Coal, filled the adjoining workings, and fired at the 

 first lights it met with, after being brought dov/n to the firing point by 

 a due admixture of atmospherical air. 



When I first examined this place, no inflammable air was discernible, 

 nor has there ever been the least appearance of any since. From this 

 it would appear, that this was an isolated bag of gas, without communi- 

 cation with any blo'wer-threads, whatever, and that it quite exhausted 

 itself by this single eruption. 



No fire had been in the face of this drift, but it had evidently sus- 

 tained a great concussion, either from the sudden eruption of the gas, 

 or from the explosion. And no marks of fire appeared for about 8 yards 

 back from the face, where at the end of the stenting r, the gas seems 

 to have become sufficiently mixed with the atmospherical air, to make 

 it explode. 



