important property, appears to have excited no attention till several
years after.

In the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1733, some properties of
coal-gas are detailed in a paper called, "An Account of the Damp Air in
a Coal-pit of Sir James Lowther, sunk within Twenty Yards of the Sea."
This paper, as it contains some striking facts relating to the
inflammability and other properties of coal-gas, is deserving of
particular attention.

The principal properties of coal-gas are here related with remarkable
minuteness and precision; and as the writer exhibited them to different
members of the Royal Society, and showed that after keeping the gas
sometime, it still retained its elasticity and inflammability, it is
remarkable, that the philosophers of the time undertook no experiments
with the view of applying it to useful purposes.

Dr. John Clayton, in an extract from a letter in the "Philosophical
Transactions" for 1735, calls gas the "spirit" of coal; and came to a
knowledge of its inflammability by an accident. This "spirit" chanced to
catch fire, by coming in contact with a candle, as it was escaping from
a fracture in one of his distillatory vessels. By preserving the gas in
bladders, he frequently diverted his friends, by exhibiting its
inflammability. This is the nearest approach to the idea of practically
applying this property.

The subject attracted the attention of Dr. Richard Watson, who published
the results of his researches in the second volume of his "Chemical
Essays." He dwells upon the elasticity and inflammability of coal-gas;
and remarked, that it retains these properties _after passing through