Cappoquin opened. It was Sunday morning, and there was an excursion to Cappoquin. I took a ticket and revisited the monastery. This time I was one of a party of seventy or eighty visitors, excursionists, who hired every car obtainable at Cappoquin, and drove in procession to besiege the monastery. The monks received the motley crowd, including a few priests, entertained them in the guesthouse with bread and cheese, ale and stout, and sherry for the ladies -making no charge, but on this occasion receiving the voluntary contributions of their unceremonious guests. While I was engaged upon the bread and cheese, Father Foley recognised me, drew me aside, and asked me to come with him and "take pot-luck." What that meant I presently learned when I found myself in a refectory within the regions of silence, and one of a select few of favoured guests who were regaling on hot roast and boiled joints, with potatoes, greens, and bottled beer. It was a curious repast, the visitors and lay-brother waiters communicating by signs, and a father in his white woollen robe preaching a sort of sermon in short semi-rhythmic paragraphs or propositions, with pause between each. Though the monks thus entertain their guests, they themselves only drink water and eat bread and vegetables. The reader may judge from the above whether the naturalist need despair of revisiting Herm when the Trappists are in possession. Some of the remarkable hospitality of Mount Meilleraye may be attributable to the irrepressible geniality of the Irishman which breaks through all restraints; but it is evident that Trappism, however severe upon its own devotees, may be very indulgent to outsiders. COLLI COAL-DUST EXPLOSIONS. OLLIERY explosions have been cruelly frequent of late, in spite of the Davy lamp, skilful ventilation, and inspection. A certain proportion are probably attributable to the carelessness of colliers, and some to preventible causes connected with the management of the mine. Recent investigations have proved that they are more frequent when a low barometer indicates diminished atmospheric pressure, and most especially when the fall has occurred suddenly. The reason of this is easily understood. The hydro-carbon gas that escapes as "fire-damp" is chiefly supplied by what the colliers call 'blowers"-small jets or streams of gas that comes hissing out from its long imprisonment when the miner's pick removes the solid impediments to its escape. As the face of the coal, like all else upon the earth and under the earth, is subject to the pressure of the atmosphere, the force of this emission must be equal to the excess of the elastic pressure of the coal-gas above that of the atmosphere. Lessen the atmospheric pressure, and the force of such emission must increase proportionally. Or in cases of gentle oozing of gas due to very small excess of pressure from within, the variations of atmospheric pressure may determine whether there shall be any escape at all beyond what is due to gaseous diffusion. Warnings are now given in order to induce special caution when the barometer is unusually low. Careful attention to the movements of the barometer has saved many a good ship, and may possibly save the lives of many colliers. It is commonly believed that fire-damp, or coal gas, is the only cause of colliery explosions. There is, however, another explosive agent quite distinct from this. In dry dusty mines explosions have occurred where the character of the coal is such that there are no sudden outbursts of fire-damp, and very little can ever be found. In these cases the explosion is accompanied by the production of clouds of smoke and deposits of soot; the timbers, the floor and roof of workings being covered with a crust of coked coal-dust. Faraday and Lyell reported to the Home Secretary in 1845 that in the Haswell colliery "this deposit was in some parts half an inch thick and in others almost an inch thick." These explosions are analogous to those which take place in flour and saw mills, and are due to the sudden ignition of particles of combustible dust suspended in the air. This subject is so little understood, that some of my readers will probably hesitate to accept the explanation. The statement of a few demonstrable facts may remove this scepticism. At a lecture delivered June 1, 1878, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Prof. L. W. Peck, he showed a number of experiments demonstrating the terribly explosive powers of flour, starch, powdered sugar, and other kinds of organic dust. A gas flame was placed near to weighed quantities of the dust, which by means of a pair of common bellows was then suddenly blown towards the flame. Thus, three-quarters of an ounce of starch placed under an inverted open box, and suddenly puffed up while a flame was burning near it, threw up the box, weighing 6 lbs., to a height of 20 feet. Half an ounce thus burned in a box closed with a loose cover, threw up the cover 3 inches, with a heavy man standing on it. A closed box of 4 cubic feet capacity, having five sides 1 inch thick, and the other side of an inch thick, was similarly charged with dust. On its ignition the thin side of the box was blown out, and a flame shot out "half-way across the stage." At first sight this may appear contradictory to our ordinary experience, but it is not so. The explosion of the starch, flour, sugar, wood-dust, mill-sweepings, &c., is almost identical in its origin and character with that of gunpowder, the difference being that the oxygen is supplied to the latter in a solid instead of a gaseous state. Gunpowder is charcoal-dust and brimstone-dust mixed with saltpetre, which salt, when heated, gives out oxygen, that combines with the dust particles, forming compound gases and evolving heat, the expansive action of which constitutes the explosion. The flour-dust, sugar-dust, starch-dust, &c., when diffused through the air, consist of minute particles, each of which is surrounded with a little atmosphere of its own, which atmosphere contains oxygen. These particles and this oxygen, when heated, unite, with evolution of more heat, and consequent expansive force, each expansively-burning particle firing its surrounding neighbours just as each grain of gunpowder fires those surrounding it, or, more strictly speaking, as each minute grain of carbon or sulphur-dust, of which the visible gunpowder grains are composed, does so. Flour contains about 40 per cent. of pure carbon; one ounce of such carbon combining with 2 ounces of oxygen will evolve heat enough to exert an expansive force capable of raising 35 tons to a height of 10 feet, supposing none of the power were wasted. To do this completely, the one ounce of dust must be equally diffused through about 9 cubic feet of air. In any other proportions, or if unequally diffused, the combustion of the dust would be incomplete, and the effect proportionally diminished. It is well for us that such correct adjustment of proportions does not often occur by accident. Coal-dust explosions are more easily preventible than fire-damp explosions, as the dust may be laid by water. In ordinary mines. there is water enough, commonly too much in some parts, though even in very wet mines certain parts of the workings may be dry. As we proceed in our present course of reckless consumption, we are driven to deeper and deeper seams; the deeper we go, the hotter and drier the mine, and the greater becomes the danger due to this additional explosion-factor, the coal-dust. So far as present experience shows, it appears to have acted rather as an adjunct to the fire-damp than an independent explosive. In the explosions of flourmills and saw-mills the combustion of the dust does all the mischief; in coal-mines the first outrush of explosive expansion and the subsequent return rush into the partial vacuum thus produced, stir up every particle of dry coal-dust, and may thus produce a secondary explosion. W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS, TH TABLE TALK. THE MEININGEN COURT COMPANY. HAT our stage has much to learn from that of other countries is the impression forced upon the mind by the successive troupes, French, Italian, Dutch, German, that come over and play for our delectation and benefit. In individual actors we stand as high as any country in Europe. I could name six or eight comedians now on the English stage whose merits "may speak unbonneted" to those of any artists that have come to us from abroad. In stage management, meanwhile, and in the drilling of supernumeraries, our position, in spite of all that has recently been effected in the way of improvement, is contemptible. It is impossible to believe in the reality of action, when those supposed to be most deeply concerned in it are gaping at the ceiling or casting bovine glances into the pit. An effect such as is produced in the performance of "The Twelfth Night" (Was Ihr wollt) by the Meiningen Court Company recently in our midst, when the message of Viola, disguised as Cesario, is given to Olivia in the presence of ladies in attendance, who take a smiling and cultivated interest in what is going on, and whisper gently one to another concerning it, is as far out of our present reach as is the more vaunted, but less effective, presentation of the mob in "Julius Cæsar" listening to the oration of Mark Antony, and roused by it to madness and mutiny. Excellent as is the German stage management, as illustrated in the before-mentioned company, it is not faultless. In the disposition of individuals, and in that of crowds, the artifice is apparent. When a conversation is being conducted in the front of the stage, those who walk behind are affected and unnatural in gesture; one waves gracefully his hand towards some imaginary object out of sight, as drawing his companion's attention to it, and a second points to what is going on, like a schoolmaster indicating to his young friends what to admire in a landscape. The same thing is seen in the groups, in which, as in a melodramatic picture, the art of arrangement is too evident, and the attitudes in which men are placed are picturesque rather than conceivable. This is scarcely hypercriticism. There is in these things defect which may be remedied, and the fact that blemishes so minute make themselves felt attests how admirable is the general representation. One critic has pointed out that the students and others, who in "The Robbers" are represented as joining Carl Moor in his wanderings, are middle-aged men, whereas they should be youths. This observation is just. The class which has always been most turbulent under oppression is the youth at the Universities. From the very formation of Universities this has held true. Stimulated by reading in the classics, and especially in Plutarch, of the heroes of antiquity, and filled with theories concerning freedom, youth has always been eager for reformation and change, and often ready for the most reckless of deeds. Of the same class as these scholars depicted in "The Robbers" are the students who are said to be the most energetic among the Nihilists. It is not only among students that youth shows itself violent and reckless. Speaking, the other day, to one of our most eminent police officials, I was told that most burglaries and desperate actions are committed by boys of eighteen to three- or four-and-twenty. With more knowledge, the criminal becomes more circumspect, and takes to less adventurous, if not less remunerative, forms of offence against society. THE INTELLECTUAL EXPRESSION IN OLD AGE. HERE are few who have not seen in happy and reverend age the kind of beauty to which Donne refers when, in his ninth elegy, he declares No spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face. The phenomenon is indeed far from rare. In masculine as in feminine physiognomy, a softening and beautifying power is exercised by the weakening and relenting influences of age. I have frequent opportunity of contemplating old men belonging to the operative classes, farm-labourers and the like, who are in receipt of parish relief or who have accepted shelter in an almshouse, and I have been struck by the social and intellectual superiority to the class from which they are drawn that their faces disclose. In the period of ripe manhood, when the fight of life is most keen, the average human face, sharpened and set for combat, is seen at its worst. Infancy finds, of course, in its helplessness an appeal to which the whole world responds; childhood |