1879O Explosions from Combustible Dust. 669 
instant is a mass of flame. Perhaps many of you remember 
the fire in the East-Side Saw-Mills, a few years ago. Large 
masses of fine sawdust had probably collected upon the 
rafters, and the whole roof was perhaps filled with cobwebs 
loaded down with dust. A fire started from one of the 
torches used, and shot through the mills with lightning-like 
rapidity, and save for the fadt that the ends and sides of the 
building were all open, there would have followed an explo- 
sion like that at the flour-mills. As it was, the men had 
very great difficulty in escaping with their lives, notwith- 
standing that a short run in any direction would have taken 
them out of the mill. 
It is*very evident that too great care cannot be taken to 
keep all such factories and mills as free from dust as 
possible. 
I will now blow some ordinary starch into the air in the 
same way, and you notice the flame is more vivid than in 
the last experiment, and if you were in my position you 
would notice that the heat produced is much greater. Notice 
now that this powdered sugar burns in the same way. 
You will see, from the experiments further on, that three- 
quarters of an ounce of starch will throw a box, weighing 
6 lbs., easily 20 feet into the air, and that half an ounce 
burned in a box will throw up the cover 3 inches with a 
heavy man standing upon it. 
With these fadts, which I have demonstrated before you, 
no one need regard as a mystery the Barclay Street explo- 
sion in New York city, where a candy-manufadtory, in which 
large amounts of starch and sugar might in many ways be 
thrown into the air by minor disturbances, took fire, and 
completely wrecked a building and destroyed many lives. 
I will now burn in the same way some buckwheat, which, 
as you will observe, gives a very large blaze ; now some 
corn-meal, which is too coarse to burn as well ; now some 
rye-flour, which burns much better than the corn ; now 
VOL ix. (n.s.) 2 u 
