The enumeration alone of the accidents which take place in the fabrication of matches, their transport, or their domestic use would require a volume. We shall direct attention only to the causes to which those accidents can be assigned, and we shall give but a few examples.

1. Fires

The danger of fire is the one which earliest occupied public attention on the appearance of this new branch of industry; and these fears have not been chimerical, for in every country dreadful examples have justified the distrust of the people, and rigorous measures 8 have been taken by the several governments, and their fabrication has even been prohibited in some countries.

The English papers have given accounts of a violent fire which took place in London, in a manufactory of matches in Widegate Street, several houses were burnt, and seven persons lost their lives.

Explosions

The explosion of the chemical mastic, before its application to the match, can present accidents as dreadful as the above, but happily they are now rare, thanks to the improvements which have been introduced in the process of fabrication.

In the beginning of the preparation of friction matches, the sulphur used to be melted with the phosphorus. This was the cause of violent explosions; not only the two bodies in contact combined to form sulphide of phosphorus, but the water is decomposed, and forms different gaseous products, which give place to dreadful explosions. This was, probably, the cause of the destruction of a factory near Paris; a violent explosion took place in the room where the dippers were working, the tables were broken to pieces, and the wall fell down.

The danger of the introduction of flowers of sulphur into the vessels in which the phosphorus is dissolved, struck Mr. Chevalier so forcibly, that he proposed, as late as 1840, to prohibit the manufacturing of matches with sulphide of phosphorus.

Not only the mixture of sulphur with phosphorus, but also the mixture of phosphorus with chlorate of potash, before the perfect division of these two substances in the glutinous solution, have been the cause of dangerous explosions, before the manufacturers dissolved those two bodies separately.

The imprudence of the men who work the mastic has been the cause of many accidents. Thus, when the dipper leaves the mastic to run, spread, and dry around the table he works on, the least friction will break the table to pieces. A drop of the mastic falling on the kettle of the dipper to the sulphur also produces violent explosions.

2. Accidents During The Transport Of Matches

Friction matches give rise to accidents, not so grave as the above, it is true; but their numbers are incalculable. To give a just idea of the number of accidents, and the fear of them, it is sufficient to say, that in Europe insurance companies refuse to insure express companies which carry matches.

Fire takes place very often in packages or boxes, contained in large boxes or barrels sent by freight, without communicating fire to other packages. Several manufacturers have given us a proof of it, by throwing on the floor packages of matches surrounded by a strong paper; we heard a crepitation indicating that the matches were taking fire, the paper was slightly burned, but, however, the flame was not visible outside. The want of air was the only obstacle to the combustion.

Sometimes the explosion of the mastic which surrounds the heads is so violent that, notwithstanding the thickest envelops, the flames pass through. Once, at Marseilles, the movement of a wagon containing 700 packages of matches, in passing up a high street, was cause sufficient for igniting the matches, which was accompanied by a strong explosion.

Similar accidents have occurred on railroads. Once, on the railroad from Vienna to Brunn, a car containing 12 barrels of matches took fire and was burned with two other cars. The loss was estimated at about $15,000.

3. Accidents Occasioned In The Ordinary Use Of Matches

There are few persons who have not witnessed some accidents occasioned by the ex-plosion of a box or bundles of matches. These accidents are often without importance, but sometimes they have serious effects.

The examples of burns, particularly in the face, produced by the explosion of a match and the projection of a fragment of the incandescent mass, were very frequent a few years ago. Several cases were recorded, in which the eyesight was lost by this cause. Happily, since the great improvement introduced in this fabrication, these accidents are rare.

Children have been repeatedly the victims of their inexperience in the handling of matches. Without speaking of light burns, which we have often observed, we have seen accidents serious enough to produce death.

The too great sensibility of matches is the principal cause of these last accidents, the same that their too great explosibility is the ordinary cause of the burns in the face and eyes. This sensibility is such, that we have seen packages of matches take fire in the hands without knowing how it happens.

Burns produced by matches do not present any particularity.

4. Diseases Produced In The Fabrication*

By examining the accidents which destroyed the health of the workmen; by inquiring which

* Poison By Phosphorus

A correspondent of the Eve-ning Post describes the case of a young girl, engaged in a friction match factory in New York, who having a tooth are, in the fabrication of matches, the particular conditions capable of exercising a deleterious influence on the economy, we are led to attach the greatest importance to the emanation of the vapors containing phosphorus, which continually exhale, with a variable abundance, in all the rooms in which the mastic is worked, or matches are present already saturated with mastic.

It is necessary to examine the two following questions, viz: extracted, was poisoned by the fames of phosphorus which entered the cavity. Disease called necrosis was induced, which extended to either side of the jaw-bone, points of discharge soon appearing upon the surface of the skin. This went on for two years, minor operations being made at times, to take away diseased portions of bone. At the end of these two years it was found necessary to resort to an extreme operation, and it was completed on Sunday, March 19th, at St. Vincent's Hospital. The entire jawbone, from side to side, was removed, and the tongue fastened down to prevent suffocation, until such times as the part should heal. This young girl is now terribly deformed, can take only liquids hereafter for subsistence - all the beauty of life destroyed to her. Twelve such cases have occurred within the last few years.

1st Which are those parts of the work which expose the workmen to the phosphoric emanations ?

2d. What are the nature and chemical com-position of these emanations ?