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it will be, I believe, through others than me. For I am 
willing to yield for the time every point except one, that 
flame surrounded by wire gauze is less dangerous than a 
naked light. Whether Sir Humphry Davy was really the 
first inventor of the instrument named after him, whether 
previous attempts or later improvements are really superior 
to " The Davy," may, so far as my object is concerned, 
be left unanswered. The case is narrowed with me to 
" Wire Gauze versus Candle." Nor does it need, for a 
decision in favour of the Davy, that it should be safe 
under all conceivable, or all actually occurring circum- 
stances. I think it a pity that the name of " Safety Lamp" 
was ever given to it ; as " The Davy," " The Stephenson," 
« The Clanny," " The Upton," would not, by their mere 
names, have raised ill-founded expectations. There is cer- 
tainly one way in which a lamp, safer than candles, but 
not absolutely and infallibly safe, may do mischief. This 
is if, in reliance upon its efficacy, work be carried on by 
its means in more dangerous situations, or with fewer pro- 
visions for safety, or less caution in other respects, than 
would have been the case were it undiscovered or discarded.* 
But we cannot ascribe to this any one of the particular 
explosions now under consideration. At Haswell, lamps 
alone were employed ; but since the seam is stated to be 
* " The Committee of 1835 pointed out that more persons had lost their lives 
by colliery explosions for the eighteen years succeeding the introduction of the 
Davy safety lamps in 1816, than in the eighteen years preceding the invention, 
and accounted for this fact by the working of numerous ' fiery' seams of coal, 
which had, in consequence of the assumed security of that lamp, been under- 
taken, and the abandonment of many precautions considered requisite when 
candles were commonly employed in collieries." ( Report, 1847, p. 8.) 
" An unfounded confidence in the lamp has been productive of great loss of 
life. First, by causing work to be carried on in dangerous mines, without other 
measures of security against explosions ; and still more unfortunately, by leading 
to a serious limitation in the number of shafts." (Edinburgh Review, No. 180, 
p. 545.) 
