Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1875 — Spontaneous Combustion of Coal. [ARTICLE]

Spontaneous Combustion of Coal.

It has remained for the court of inquiry which has recently closed a long session at Hong Kong, China, on the cause of the loss of the Pacific Mail steamship Japan by fire, to discover and announce to the world the danger which attends ocean travel by reason of the possibility of the spontaneous combustion of coal stowed away in the .bunkers of every steamship. The cause of the burning of the Japan was closely enshrouded in mystery, but the court of investigation, after deducing all possible testimony from the crew without reaching satisfactory conclusions, learned at last from the engineer on duty just previous to the disaster that one of the coalbunkers had not been inspected for at least twenty-four hours, and in this bunker the fire first broke forth. This testimony was considered conclusive, and the opinion arrived at was that spontaneous combustion of coal in this particular bunker was the cause of the fire which consumed the Japan and resulted in the attendant great loss of life and property. In closing its session the court recommended that in future the strictest rules be adopted by steamship companies and enforced by the officers of vessels in the mailer of coal-bunker inspection, and decided that four hours was a sufficient time for coal stored away in a vessel at sea to engender a heat sufficient to create combustion, the conditions being favorable.

With such a decision, coming from an apparently honest body of investigators and substantiated as it is by the probabilities in the case of the Japan disaster, not only steamboat men but users of coal generally should see to it with continued diligence that the combustious nature of the article is not permitted to involve in conflagration its surroundings.— Chicago Journal. k A lady on the east shore of Maryland happened to make sausage meat and mince pies on the same day. Being called to the parlor to receive company she returned to find to her sorrow that the cook had put the wine, spice, sugar and plums into the sausages, while the mince meat received its complement of sweet herbs, salt and pepper. The lady magnanimously bestowed the whole stock on the poor, since which she has never been troubled by the sick and demoralized paupers who were her victims.

—The new Encyclovodia BritannieahM these appalling assertions: “If the natural resources of America were fully developed it would afford sustenance to 8 600,000,000 inhabitants—a number near, ly five times as great as the entire mass of human beings now existing on the globe. And, what is even more surprising. it is not more improbable that this prodigious population will be in existence within three, or at most four, centuries.