and unmanageable of all explosives. Chlorine is a great water separator,
but in the present case its affinity for hydrogen would result in
hydrochloric acid, a fire extinguisher.

What happens in chemical experiment may be developed on a large scale in
burning grocery, drug, or drysalters' stores, when great quantities of
materials, such as just mentioned, including common salt, almost always
present, are heated most intensely, and then subjected to the action of
water in heavy dashes, or in form of spray or steam.

Picric acid, the nature of which we have several times previously
mentioned, and which explodes at 600 deg. F. (only 28 deg. above gunpowder), may
also be an element in such explosions during fires. Its salts form, in
combinations, various powerful explosives, much exceeding gunpowder
in force; and they have been used to a considerable extent in Europe.
Picric acid, now much employed by manufacturers and dyers for obtaining
a yellow color, is always kept in store largely by drysalters and
druggists, and generally by dyers, but in smaller quantity.

In a very destructive fire which occurred in Liverpool, Eng., in
October, 1874, involving the loss of several "fire-proof" stores,
repeated explosions of the vapor of turpentine rent ponderous brick
arched vaults, and exposed to the flames stocks of cotton, etc., in the
stories above. This conflagration was started by the carelessness of an
_employee_ in snuffing a tallow candle with his fingers and throwing the
burning snuff into the open bung-hole of a sample barrel of turpentine,
of which liquid there were many hundreds of barrels on storage in the
buildings. Turpentine vapor united with chlorine gas may not produce
explosion, but by spreading flames almost instantly throughout the
burning buildings, such burnings have practically equaled, if not