5

in Dauphiny,* the Duke de Choiseul, at thattime Prime Minister of France, recom-mended the subject to the consideration ofthe Academy of Sciences, and a committeewas appointed, who made it for some timethe object of their attention; but the planthat they proposed for avoiding the danger,was a common mode of ventilation.

This evil of the fire damp, though be-longing to all coal mines, has been most se-verely experienced in those of Hainault, inFlanders, and the infinitely more impor-tant mines in the neighbourhood of White-haven and Newcastle, in this country.

The number of dreadful accidents, in-deed, which had happened within the lastthree or four years in the last mentioneddistricts, particularly that by which ninety-six persons were destroyed in the Fellingcolliery, had so strongly impressed the mindsof a number of benevolent persons belong-ing to or connected with the coal districts,that it was said to be in their contempla-tion to bring the subject before Parliament,that by making it a national question, it

* Histoire de 1’A.cadetnie Royale, 1763, p. 1.