The coal appears to part with a portion of _carburetted hydrogen_, when newly exposed to the atmosphere; a fact which explains the well-known circumstance of the coal being more inflammable when fresh from the pit, than after long exposure to the air. We are informed by the Rev. Mr. Hodgson, that, on pounding some common Newcastle coal fresh from the mine, in a cask furnished with a small aperture, he found the gas which issued from it to be inflammable; and Davy, on breaking some lumps of coal under water, also ascertained that they gave off inflammable gas. The supposition that the coal strata have been formed under a pressure greater than that of the atmosphere, may furnish a clue to the comprehension of this phenomenon.
On some occasions the pitmen have opened with their picks crevices, or fissures, in the coal or shale, which have emitted as much as seven hundred hogsheads of _fire-damp_ in a minute. These _Blowers_, as they are technically termed, have been known to continue in a state of activity for many months, or even years together;[25] a phenomenon which clearly shows that the carburetted hydrogen must have existed in the cavities of the strata in a very highly compressed, if not actually in a liquid state, and which, on the diminution of pressure, has resumed its elastic form.
[25] Sir James Lowther found a uniform current of this description produced in one of his mines for the space of two years and nine months. Phil. Trans, vol. 38. p. 112.
All the sources of carburetted hydrogen would appear to unite in the deep and valuable collieries situated between the great North road and the sea. Their air courses are thirty or forty miles in length; and here, as might be expected, the most tremendous explosions have happened. Old workings, likewise, upon being broken into, have not unfrequently been found filled with this gas, and which, by mingling itself with the common air, has converted the whole atmosphere of the mine into a magazine of _fire-damp_.
On the approach of a candle, it is in an instant kindled: the expanding fluid drives before it a roaring whirlwind of flaming air, which tears up every thing in its progress, scorching some of the miners to a cinder, and burying others under enormous ruins shaken from the roof; when thundering to the shafts, it converts the mine, as it were, into an enormous piece of artillery, and wastes its fury in a discharge of thick clouds of coal-dust, stones, and timber, together with the limbs and mangled bodies of men and horses.