methods of lighting the mines without producing its explosion. 3 
periments, with the hope of producing such a degree of light, 
without active inflammation; I tried Kunckel’s, Canton’s, 
and Baldwin’s phosphorus, and likewise the electrical light 
in close vessels, but without success ; and even had these 
degrees of light been sufficient, the processes for obtaining 
them, I found, would be too complicated and difficult for the 
miners. 
The fire-damp has been shown by Dr. Henry, in a very 
ingenious paper published in the nineteenth volume of 
Nicholson’s Journal, to be light carburetted hydrogene gas, 
and Dr. Thomson has made some experiments upon it; but 
the degree of its combustibility, as compared with that of other 
inflammable gases, has not, I believe, been examined, nor 
have many different specimens of it been analysed; and it 
appeared to me, that some minute chemical experiments on its 
properties ought to be the preliminary steps to enquiries 
respecting methods of preventing its explosion. I therefore 
procured various specimens of the fire-damp in its purest 
state, and made a number of experiments upon it. And in 
examining its relations to combustion I was so fortunate as 
to discover some properties belonging to it, which appear 
to lead to very simple methods of lighting the mines, with- 
out danger to the miners, and which, I hope, will supply the 
desideratum so long anxiously required by humanity. I 
shall in the following pages have the honour of describing 
these properties, and the methods founded upon them, to the 
Royal Society, and I shall conclude with some general 
observations. 
The fire-damp is produced in small quantities in coal mines, 
during the common process of working. 
