air outside, and so cause explosions in the
dangerous fire-damp which is always liable to occur abundantly in the
galleries of coal mines. By this invention alone George Stephenson's
name and memory might have been kept green for ever; for his lamp has
been the means of saving thousands of lives from a sudden, a terrible,
and a pitiful death. Most accidents that now occur in mines are due to
the neglect of ordinary precautions, and to the perverse habit of
carrying a naked lighted candle in the hand (contrary to regulations)
instead of a carefully guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless
of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people
everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules,
explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take
place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than
before the invention of the Geordie lamp.

Curiously enough, at the very time when George Stephenson was busy
inventing his lamp at Killingworth, Sir Humphrey Davy was working at
just the same matter in London; and the two lamps, though a little
different in minor points of construction, are practically the same in
general principle. Now, Sir Humphrey was then the great fashionable
natural philosopher of the day, the favourite of London society, and
the popular lecturer of the Royal Institution. His friends thought it a
monstrous idea that his splendid life-saving apparatus should have been
independently devised by "an engine-wright of Killingworth of the name
of Stephenson--a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements
of chemistry." This sounds very odd reading at the present day, when
the engine-wright of the name of Stephenson has altered the whole face
of the world, while Davy is chiefly remembered as a meritorious and
able chemist; but at the time, Stephenson's claim to the invention met
with little courtesy from the great public of London, where a meeting
was held on purpose to denounce his right to the credit of the
invention. What the coal-owners and colliers of the North Country
thought about the matter was sufficiently shown by their subscription
of 1000 pounds, as a Stephenson testimonial fund. With part of the
money, a silver tankard was presented to the deserving engine-wright,
while the remainder of the sum was handed over to him in ready cash. A
very acceptable present it was, and one which George Stephenson
remembered with pride down t