Dr. R. Hare on the Explosiveness of Nitre. 527 



conclusive evidence, so far as the oaths of worthy and well- 

 informed witnesses could avail, that no gunpowder was con- 

 tained in the building within which the explosions occurred. 

 Of course, the real cause of the disaster became a subject of 

 perplexing consideration for chemists in general, and espe- 

 cially for those adepts in chemistry, to whom the Corporation 

 of the city concerned applied for an elucidation of the my- 

 stery. 



7. It was fully established by the statements of the highly 

 respectable proprietors, and that of their storehouse clerk, 

 that there were in the store more than 300,000 pounds of 

 nitre, secured in double gunny bags, containing 180 pounds 

 of nitre each, in piles alternating with heaps of combustible 

 merchandise; yet as, agreeably to ordinary experience, such 

 combustibles deflagrate when ignited with nitre, without ex- 

 ploding, this did not remove the unfavourable impressions 

 unjustly created respecting the occupants of the store. The 

 stowing of any large quantity of gunpowder adequate to the 

 effects produced, had been culpably imprudent and illegal ; 

 and coupled with a most solemn denial on their part, would 

 have involved them in the baseness of falsehood, if not the 

 guilt of perjury. 



S. To everybody the elucidation of the mystery was desi^ 

 rable, since, without a correct knowledge of the causes, the 

 proper means of guarding against a recurrence of such explo- 

 sions could not be devised. It was interesting to men of 

 science to have it ascertained wherefore their efforts to pro- 

 duce an explosion by similar ingredients were unsuccessful # . 

 To the occupants of the store it was important, since they 

 were liable, not only to ill opinion and legal prosecution as 

 above stated, but likewise to a deprivation of their claims for 

 insurance. Fortunately for them, in opposition to the opi- 

 nions and experimental inferences of several chemists who 

 were consulted, tending to extend or confirm the idea, that 

 gunpowder, illegally and most culpably stored, must have been 

 the cause of the catastrophe, the opinions of Silliman and 

 Hayes, and other eminent chemists, were called forth, tending 

 to sanction the inference that the result might be due to the 

 reaction of nitre with contiguous merchandise. 



* With means furnished by the Councils, five eminent chemists made 

 several experiments upon a large scale, in order to ascertain the effect of 

 igniting nitre with such combustibles as were associated with it in the store 

 of Messrs. Crocker and Warren ; yet in no instance could they produce 

 detonating reaction. The activity of the combustion never surpassed that 

 degree of rapidity and consequent violence which may be designated by the 

 word deflagration. 



