In spite of the “spark-emitting wheel,” and of the systems of ventilation introduced by Ryan, James Spedding, John Buddle, and others, “the swart demon of the mine” grew more and more formidable, and demanded a greater number of victims every year. Mechanical science would appear to have spent itself, and the mining world was gradually coming to look upon fire-damp with the fatalism with which ignorant and superstitious people regard the plague. Some of the great coal owners--powerless to do more, but afraid of the rising tide of public opinion--used their influence with the newspapers to suppress all allusion to these calamities. But many persons, especially the physicians and clergymen in the mining districts, who were witnesses of the suffering and distress which the “firing” of a mine occasioned, kept public attention alive by means of pamphlets and letters and notices to such journals as would insert their communications. One colliery--the Brandling Main or Felling Colliery, near Gateshead-on-Tyne--acquired an unenviable notoriety from the frequency with which it fired. On May 25th, 1812, an explosion occurred which killed ninety-two men and boys. No calamity of such magnitude had ever happened before in a coal mine. Eighteen months afterwards a second explosion took place by which twenty-three lives were lost. In the following year explosions occurred at Percy Main, Hebburn, and Seafield. In June, 1815, Newbottle Colliery exploded with the loss of fifty-seven men and boys, and this was immediately followed by a similar disaster at Sheriff Hill. The Rev. Mr. Hodgson--the historian of Northumberland--in whose parish the Brandling Main was situated, published a particular account of the first Felling Colliery Explosion. This was widely circulated, and ultimately found its way into Thomson’s _Annals of Philosophy_, which continued to print accounts of similar accidents as they occurred. At length Mr. J. J. Wilkinson, a barrister resident in the Temple, suggested the formation of a society to investigate the whole subject and to seek for remedies. The Bishop of Durham and the Rev. Dr. Gray, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, but then Rector of Bishopwearmouth, led the way, and ultimately the society was instituted on October 1st, 1813, with Sir Ralph Millbanke, afterwards Sir Ralph Noel, as President. Its first report contains a letter from Mr. John Buddle, the great authority on the ventilation of coal mines, in which he expresses his conviction that mechanical agencies are practically powerless to prevent explosions in mines subjected to sudden bursts of fire-damp, and he concludes