All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

CHAPTER III The Story of Coal-Gas Something like two hundred years ago the residents of the northern town of Warrington were thrown into wild excitement and a state of frenzied alarm. The cause was an old, abandoned, and almost forgotten well in the neighbourhood. As wells, when permitted to fall into disuse, will do, this par- ticular hole, which had been sunk for water, became charged with a noxious gas. But it was not the usual gas which is found under such conditions. The townsfolk were positive upon this point, but they could offer no reason as to why it should not be car- bonic acid gas which gathers in wells. They scratched their heads and discussed the subject animatedly, but they could not offer any explanation of the mystery. News of this peculiar gas became noised throughout the countryside, to come, some years later, to the ears of a well-known clergyman. The reports interested him, because, being a man of science, the apparently inexplicable exercised a strange fascination. Accord- ingly, the Rev. Dr. John Clayton decided to visit the well and to probe the mystery upon the spot. His investigations aroused considerable interest among the unsophisticated countryfolk, who followed his movements with a strange, almost breathless, excite- ment. When he withdrew his tinder-box, and lit a rush candle in broad daylight, their speculation as E 49