I 



DISCHARGING OF ORDNANCE. 509 



gard to inflammables, as takes place in the several 

 safety lamps, and particularly that of Sir Humphry 

 Davy, Several experiments were tried, to ascer- 

 tain if this suggestion were correct ; first, the wire- 

 gauze was put at a ; then at a and b ; and lastly, at 

 a, h and c ; placing at the same time, during each 

 trial, a quantity of gunpowder in a piece of flannel 

 at the bottom of the tube ; and in all of these I 

 found the gunpowder to be inflamed, and the wire- 

 gauze not to be in the least injured. 



Experiment 16. — I next tried the result of firing 

 the fulminating powder, with the finest wire-gauze 

 placed first at a, then at a and b, and then at a, b 

 and c, and found that the flame still appeared at the 

 bottom (B) ; shewing that the gauze, although much 

 finer than that used in Sir Humphry Davy's safe- 

 ty lamp, was not impervious to this flame. In some 

 of the experiments I found a hole had been made 

 in the centre of the wire-gauze, and sometimes the 

 parallel wires were forced wider. This was very 

 often the case, when a piece of wire-gauze was put 

 at all the joinings, a, b and c, and then it was the 

 gauze at a which was torn, or otherwise injured. 



Experiment 17.— In order to ascertain if the 

 flame still remained unaltered, notwithstanding its 

 having passed through the finest gauze, a quantity 

 of gunpowder in flannel was affixed to the bottom of 

 the apparatus, and it was inflamed through one, two, 

 and even three pieces of the gauze. Here the same 

 occasional appearance, noticed in the last experi- 



