now be altogether avoided. It is well known that the favorite form of lamp
with the firemen is the Davy, because it shows more readily the presence of
small quantities of gas; but the Davy was some years ago condemned, and is
now strictly prohibited in all Belgian and many English mines. Recent
experience, gained by repeated experiments with costly apparatus, has
resulted in not only proving the Davy and some other descriptions of lamps
to be unsafe, but some of our Government Inspectors and our most
experienced mining engineers go so far as to say that "no lamp in a strong
current of explosive gas is safe unless protected by a tin shield."

[Illustration]

If such is the case, Mr. Garforth seems to have struck the key-note when,
in the recent paper read before the Midland Institute of Mining and Civil
Engineers, and which we have now before us, he says: "It would seem from
the foregoing remarks that in any existing safety-lamp where one
qualification is increased another is proportionately reduced; so it is
doubtful whether all the necessary requirements of sensitiveness,
resistance to strong currents, satisfactory light, self-extinction, perfect
combustion, etc., can ever be combined in one lamp."

The nearest approach to Mr. Garforth's invention which we have ever heard
of is that of a workman at a colliery in the north of England, who, more
than twenty years ago, to avoid the trouble of getting to the highest part
of the roof, used a kind of air pump, seven or eight feet long, to extract
the gas from the breaks; and some five years ago Mr. Jones, of Ebbw Vale,
had a similar idea. It appears that these appliances were so cumbersome,
besides requiring too great length or height for most mines, and
necessitating the use of both hands, that they did not come into general
use. The ideas, however, are totally different, and the causes which have