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than are published in Copenhagen, whose inhabitants number 200,000; or in Stockholm, with 170,000 residents. Indeed, Algiers, possessing only 53,000 souls, has as many presses at work on newspapers as the City of Churches; while Constantinople, with a population only about 140,000 larger than that of Brooklyn, boasts about twice as many newspapers as the latter, and her papers are published in almost as many different tongues as there are different journals. In respect of daily newspaper issues, Great Britain has no occasion to boast over America; for the nineteen daily journals of London give her 4,000,000 people only 1,009,000 impressions a day, or a little more than one paper to four inhabitants. The nine dailies of Liverpool (population 525,000) have a combined daily circulation of only 255,000. Manchester (population 375,000) issues daily from six presses only 247,000 newspapers. Edinburgh (population 200,000) has four daily journals, with an aggregate edition not larger than 120,000; while Glasgow (population 650,000), with six daily presses, calls for no more than 200,000 copies per day. Even Dublin does, proportionately, a little better than her Scottish neighbor, and considerably better than London, for her six daily presses give her 250,000 people 82,000 daily papers, or one copy to three inhabitants. Thus it does not appear that, in regard to the general demand for daily newspapers, the British public is more exacting than the American. Indeed we find, upon examination, that the cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, with an aggregate population of six millions, with fifty daily newspapers, demand 1,994,000 copies a day, being at the rate. of 103 papers per annum for each individual, estimating 311 publishing days to make a year. On the other hand, the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, with an aggregate population of 3,750,000, having eighty-four daily newspapers, issue an aggregate edition of 1,693,000 copies, being at the rate of 140 copies per annum for each individual.

THE INTRODUCTION OF GAS.

MURDOCH, WINSOR, CLEGG, AND OTHERS.

GAS-LIGHTING, like many other conveniences which tend to promote the comfort of life, is not one of those striking improvements which still continue, like the steam-engine and the electric telegraph, to rivet the attention and dazzle the imagination almost as much as they did on their first introduction. We now read almost incredulously the high-colored language in which, in the infancy of gas-lighting, some writers describe its effects, dwelling on its surpassing radiance, and its wonderful brilliance, making midnight clearer than noonday. It is only when we cast our thoughts back toward the beginning of the present century, and reflect how dirty, how smoky, how feeble must have been the candles and oil-lamps then in use compared with the purity and brilliance of gas-light, that we begin to see that the raptures of the writers to whom we have alluded were not feigned, but really expressive of their genuine sentiments.

The discovery of the inflammable properties of coal-gas is comparatively recent. Coal itself was unknown to the ancients, and was not used as fuel in England till 1238. It is long after this date, however, before we come across the first record of the ignition of coal-gas, which is rather singular, as one would have supposed that the colliers must very soon have become acquainted with the phenomenon. In 1659 a Mr. Thomas Shirley communicated to the Royal Society some experiments on the gas issuing from a well near Wigan, in LanHis paper was printed in the "Philosophical Trans

Shirley's Experiments with Coal-gas.

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actions" for June, 1667, and is rather amusing, on account of the naïveté of its language and the quaintness of its style. "About the latter end of February, 1659," he says, "returning from a journey to my house in Wigan, I was entertained with a relation of an odd spring situated in one Mr. Hawkley's ground (if I mistake not), about a mile from the town, in that road which leads to Warrington and Chester.

"The people of this town did confidently affirm that the water of the spring did burn like oyle; into which error they suffered themselves to fall for want of due examination of the following particulars :

"For when we came to the said spring (being five or six in company together), and applied a lighted candle to the surface. of the water, 'tis true there was suddenly a large flame produced, which burnt vigorously; at the sight of which they all began to laugh at me for denying what they had positively asserted; but I, who did not think myself confuted by a laughter grounded upon inadvertency, began to examine what I saw; and observing that this spring had its eruption at the foot of a tree, growing on the top of a neighbouring bank, the water of which spring filled a ditch that was there, and covered the burning place lately mentioned; I then applied the lyghted candle to divers parts of the water contained in the said ditch, and found, as I expected, that upon the touch of the candle and the water the flame was extinct.

"Again, having taken up a dishful of water at the flaming place, and held the lighted candle in it, it went out; yet I observed the water at the burning place did boyle and heave like water in a pot upon the fire, though my hand perceived it not so much as warm.

"This boyling I conceived to proceed from the eruption of some bituminous or sulphureous fumes, considering this place. was not above thirty or forty yards distant from the mouth of a coal-pit there, and indeed Wigan, Ashton, and the whole country for many miles' compass, is underlaid with coal. Then, applying my hand to the surface of the burning place of the

water, I found a strong breath, as it were a wind, to bear against my hand.

"Then I caused a dam to be made, and thereby hindering the recourse of fresh water to the burning place, I caused that which was already there to be drained away; and then applying the burning candle to the surface of the dry earth at the same point were the water burned before, the fumes took fire and burnt very bright and vigorous; the cone of the flames ascended a foot and a half from the superficies of the earth; the basis of it was of the compass of a man's hat above the brim. I then caused a bucketful of water to be poured on the fire, by which it was presently quenched, as well as my companions' laughter was stopped, who began to think the water did not burn.

"I did not perceive the flame to be discoloured like that of sulphureous bodies, nor to have any manifest scent with it. The fumes, when they broke out of the earth and prest against my hand, were not, to my best remembrance, at all hot."

The flame which Shirley describes was probably produced by carburetted hydrogen gas. The apparent "boyling" of the water had been caused by the bubbling of the gas.

Soon after Shirley's experiments, Dr. John Clayton, Dean of Kildare, actually made coal-gas, and related the results of his labors in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle. His letter does not appear to have been publicly known till 1739, when it appeared in the "Philosophical Transactions." On examining a ditch within two miles of Wigan, in Lancashire (apparently the same which Shirley had previously described), "wherein the water would seemingly burn like brandy," he found that though a lighted paper were waved over the ditch, it would not take fire. He then hired a person to make a dam in the ditch and fling out the water, in order to try whether the steam which arose out of the ditch would then take fire; but he found that it would not. Pursuing his experiment, he made the man dig deeper. When he had dug about the depth of half a yard a shelly coal was found; and the candle being then

Clayton Makes Coal-gas.

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put down into the hole, the air "catched fire" and continued burning.

Fired with scientific ardor, Clayton determined to carry on his experiments. He got some coal and distilled it in an open fire. "At first," he writes, "there came over only phlegm [steam], afterward a black oil, and then likewise a spirit [gas] arose, which I could in no ways condense, but it forced my lute, and on coming close thereto to repair it, I observed that the spirit which issued out caught fire at the flame of the candle, and continued burning with violence as it issued out in a stream, which I blew out and lighted alternately several times. I then filled a good many bladders therewith, and might have filled an inconceivable number more, for the spirit continued to rise for several hours, and filled the bladders almost as fast as a man could have blown them with his mouth; and yet the quantity of coals was inconsiderable. I kept this spirit in the bladders a considerable time, and endeavored several ways to condense it, but in vain; and when I had a mind to divert strangers or friends, I have frequently taken one of the bladders and pricked a hole therein with a pin, and compressing gently the bladder near the flame of a candle till it once took fire, it would then continue flaming till all the spirit was compressed out of the bladder; which was the more surprising because no one could discern any difference between these bladders and those which are filled with common air."

From the above account we may gather how close an approach was made to gas-lighting considerably more than a century before it was actually introduced. In Clayton's time the mechanical difficulties would probably have been too great to be overcome; but it is a wonder that some speculative individual should not, on seeing his narrative in the "Philosophical Transactions," have been moved to bring forward some scheme for the introduction of lighting by gas. As a matter of fact, Clayton's statements appear to have attracted very little attention of any kind.

In Dr. Stephen Hales's "Vegetable Staticks," published in