Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/175

Rh from the moisture in the materials. This steam would condense in the meal and interfere with bolting, etc, if it were not removed. To effect this another draught of air and another spout are employed, and, as might be expected, this current takes a large quantity of the very finest flour, called flour-dust, with it. To save this a room is provided near the end of the spout, called the flour-dust house. The spout conveying steam and dust enters this room on one side, and another spout opposite leaves it, passing to the open air. It is in this comparatively dead-air space that the dust settles, and can be collected from the floor. Here is some of this material, which, as you see, when blown into the air, produces a vivid flash, extending from the table to the wall.

The evidence taken before the coroner's jury shows very clearly that it was this material that started the great explosion of May 2d. Just how the mill took fire will probably never be known of course, but in all probability the stones either ran dry—that is, were without any meal between them—or some foreign substance, such as a nail, was in the feed, producing a train of sparks such as is produced by an emery-wheel, or a scissors-grinder's wheel. These sparks set fire to small wads of very hot dust, which, as soon as they were fanned into a blaze, communicated it to the spout and house full of dust. An eye-witness of the explosion first saw fire issuing from the corner of the mill where this flour-dust spout was situated, the end of the spout having probably been blown out. This fire was followed instantly by a quick flash, seen through all the windows of the floor upon which the flour-dust houses were situated, followed instantly by a flash in the second story, then the third, and, in rapid succession, fourth, fifth, and sixth stories; then followed the great report produced when the immense stone walls were thrown out in all four directions, and the roof and part of the interior of the mill shot into the air like a rocket.

It would seem that a blaze is necessary to ignite the mixture, for I have tried powerful electric sparks from a machine, and from a battery of Leyden-jars; also incandescent platinum wire in a galvanic circuit, and glowing charcoal, without producing any fire, however thick the dust might be. Perhaps, however, under