under the penalty of one shilling. In 1736, the lord mayor and common
council applied to parliament for an act to enable them to erect lamps;
and in 1744 they obtained farther powers for lighting the city.
Birmingham was first lighted by lamps in 1733, so that in this
improvement it preceded the metropolis."--_Beckman's History of
Inventions_.

It may not be disagreeable to our readers to trace the brilliant lights
by which the streets are illuminated, from the obscure recesses of
nature, and to show by what steps that which was once thought simply an
object of curiosity, has been applied to a practical purpose of the most
useful and agreeable kind.

The inflammable gases were known originally for their direful effects
rather than their useful qualities. Miners were acquainted with two of
them, called the _choke damp_ and the _fire damp_, long before
the establishment of the Royal Society; but the earliest printed account
of either occurs in its Transactions, in the year 1667. The paper in
which it is contained, is entitled, "A Description of a Well and Earth
in Lancashire taking Fire, by a Candle approaching to it. Imparted by
Thomas Shirley, Esq an eye-witness."

Dr. Stephen Hales was the first person who procured an elastic fluid
from the actual distillation of coal. His experiments with this object
are related in the first volume of his Vegetable Statics, published in
1726. From the distillation of "one hundred and fifty-eight grains of
Newcastle coal, he states that he obtained one hundred and eighty cubic
inches of air, which weighed fifty-one grains, being nearly one third of
the whole." The inflammability of the fluid he thus produced was no part
of his inquiry; and though it is now deemed its most useful and