were extinguished, the nearest remaining being at a distance of four hundred feet.  But in this crude naphtha there was, as usual, a quantity of volatile spirit which was being given off even at the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.  This soon became ignited, and with an explosion the column of oil was suddenly converted into a roaring column of fire.  The owner of the property was thrown a distance of twenty feet by the explosion, and soon afterwards died from the burns which he had received from it.  Such an accident could not now, however, happen.  The tapping, stopping, and regulating of gushing wells can now be more effectually dealt with, and in the process of refining; the most inflammable portions are separated, with a result that, as no oil is used in the country which flashes under 100 deg.  F. open test, and as our normal temperature is considerably less than this, there is little to be feared in the way of explosion if the Act be complied with.

When the results of Mr Young’s labours became publicly known, a number of companies were started with the object of working on the lines laid down in his patent, and these not only in Great Britain but also in the United States, whither quantities of cannel coal were shipped from England and other parts to feed the retorts.  In 1860, according to the statistics furnished, some seventy factories were established in the United States alone with the object of extracting oil from coal and other mineral sources, such as bituminous shale, etc.  When Young’s patent finally expired, a still greater impetus was given to its production, and the manufacture would probably have continued to develop were it not that attention had, two years previously, been forcibly turned to those discoveries of great stores of natural oil in existence beneath a comparatively thin crust of earth, and which, when bored into, spouted out to tremendous heights.

The discovery of these oil-fountains checked for a time the development of the industry, but with the great production there has apparently been a greatly increased demand for it, and the British industry once again appears to thrive, until even bituminous shales have been brought under requisition for their contribution to the national wealth.

Were it not for the nuisance and difficulty experienced in the proper cleaning and trimming of lamps, there seems no other reason why mineral oil should not in turn have superseded the use of gas, even as gas had, years before, superseded the expensive animal and vegetable oils which had formerly been in use.