The recent deplorable explosions in the Barnsley and North Staffordshire Coal Fields have again called attention to the coincidence of such terrible accidents with a sudden fall of the barometer, by which they are so frequently preceded, suggesting the idea that they may be to some extent connected as cause and effect, and perhaps the following facts may induce a belief that there is truth in the supposition.

Some years since (in 1848) my attention was called to a well at Whittingham, on a farm then and now occupied by Mr. John France, about four miles N. W. of Preston, in Lancashire, celebrated in the district as “the blowing well.” This well was sunk for the purpose of supplying the farm buildings with water, but after going down about eighty feet in vain, the work was abandoned, and the well was covered with a large flagstone, with a hole through it for the chain used in placing it on the well.