in a Flour- Warehouse . 
57 
strong, it produced no explosion : here the poor boy, al- 
ready mentioned, broke his leg. The greatest inflam- 
mation, on the contrary, took place in the smaller cham- 
ber, and, taking the direction of a small staircase, which 
leads into the back shop, caused a violent explosion, 
which threw down the frames of the windows which 
looked into the street. The baker himself, who hap^ 
pened then to be in his shop, saw the room all on fire 
some moments before he felt the shock of the explosion. 
The warehouse, at the time of the accident, contained 
about three hundred sacks of flour. 
Suspecting that this flour might have been laid up in 
the warehouse in a damp state, I thought it right to en- 
quire into that circumstance. I found, upon examina- 
tion, that it was perfectly dry ; there was no appearance 
of fermentation in it, nor was there any sensible heat. 
The baker told me that he had never had flour so dry 
as in that year (1785), during which the weather had 
been remarkably dry, there having been no rain in Pied- 
mont for the space of five or six months : indeed, he at- 
tributed the accident which had happened in his ware- 
house to the extraordinary dryness of the corn. 
The phenomenon, however striking at the time it hap- 
pened, was not entirely new to the baker, who told me 
that he had, when he was a boy, witnessed a similar in- 
flammation; it took place in a flour-warehouse, where 
they were pouring flour through a long wooden trough, 
into a bolter, while there was a light on one side ; but, in 
this case, the inflammation was not followed by an ex- 
plosion. 
He mentioned to me several other instances, which I 
thought it my duty to enquire into ; amongst them, one 
which had happened to the widow Ricciardi, baker in 
this city, where (there being, on the other side of the 
wall of the flour- warehouse, a lock- smith’s forge) the 
Vol, I* H 
