ame 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oil should not in turn have superseded the use of gas, even as gas had,
years before, superseded the expensive animal and vegetable oils which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.

Although this great development in the use of mineral oils has taken
place only within the last thirty years, it must not be thought tha