Automatic Fire Annihilators.
The Philadelphia Ledger, at least, does not believe in the so-called automatic fire-extinguishers, several of which have been patented and offered to the public. The Ledger says:
Inventors of fire annihilators, designed to smother flames by the generation of gas, depriving the fire of oxygen, frequently seek to make their apparatus “ automatic ” by the use of fuses, or machinery controlled by heat, so that, should a fire ignite the fuse, or raise the temperature of the room beyond a certain limit, the gas would be generated in sufficient volume to fill the room and smother the fire. The more efficient the fire annihilator may be, however, the more dangerous it may prove to human life. Workmen could not work in a room supplied with such apparatus with much more safety than if the fuse led to a keg of gunpowder. If, to save them from the danger, the apparatus had to be put in working order each night, neglect of that duty would almost certainly follow, while, if the duty was strictly attended to, and a fire extinguished by the apparatus, Firemen or others entering the room might themselves be smothered by the fire annihilating gas. These objections to automatic apparatus apply to all forms which depend upon filling the room with gas to smother the fire or deprive it of oxygen. Fire annihilating compounds, wet or dry, are useful when promptly used by men of sufficient intelligence to know the manner in which they are intended to work, but since the gas they produce is fatal to animal life, they should not oe set up anywhere where they are liable to combine under certain conditions in an occupied room, or in one which may be incautiously entered at any time.
In Chicago, during the month of October last, there were fifty-one fires traceable to the following causes:
Maliciousness, 6 ; mischievous boys, 3 ; fraudulent intent, 4 ; defective furnace, 2 ; spontaneous combustion, 2 ; refuse, match, or cigar stuff, 4 ; stovepipe run through and setting fire to plastered partition, I ; woodwork over boiler exposed, 1 ; portable gas jet turned against wood, 1 ; ignition of kerosene from which lamp was being filled, 4 ; lamp tipped over in drunken row, 1 ; children playing with matches, 2 ; sparks falling among shavings and refuse, 2 ; wind blowing down smoke-stack, 1 ; foul chimneys burned out, 5 ; ignition of clothing hung around stoves to dry, 1 ; insufficient flue, 1 ; heated journal, 1 ; defective flue, 3; false alarms, 6. The actual loss was $50,000, covered by insurance amounting to $38,200.
FIREMEN AS Policemen.—Tho Fire Commissioners of Cincinnati, Ohio, have turned tho Firemen into special policemen. The following is an order recently issued by them :
“ Every member of the Fire Department shall be commissioned and sworn in as special policeman, and they shall bo required to perform such duties as arc now’ required of the regular police of the city in preserving the peace and protecting life and property, and enforcing the law’s of the State and all ordinances of the city. Provided, they shall not bo required to go any unreasonable distance from the engine house in tho performance of police duty; and in no case shall the engine house bo left by the members of the company in the performance of police duty without at least two members of tho company being left in charge. In ease of an alarm of fire while the members of the company are engaged in police duty, they shall be governed by the particular circumstances, and use proper discretion in giving their services to police or fire duly, as the exigency of the case may seem to require.”
AN AMBASSADOR AS A Kikf.man.— On the occasion of a largo tire, tho Japanese Minister accredited to the court at Dieppe, with the Special Commissioner and another of the suite, went quietly gazing at the scene, having received a special permission to pass through the cordon of gendarmes, in a few minutes an over-zealous soldier pounced on them, and insisted with outspoken threats, that they’ should join the line of bucket – passers. Expostulations in dubious French were of no avail. Literally at the point of the bayonet they were driven to this work. They wisely accepted tho position with a good grace, and toiled for some time with the French citizens. Fortunately the Minister had (ho side of tho empty buckets. At last, a French officer becarno acquainted with tho facts, and released the distinguished diplomatists. All this comes of adopting European costume.
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COSTLY Removals.—A Buffalo paper saythat Superintendent French, of the Buffalo Fire Department, has involved that city in a nice scrape. When he became superintendent, several yours ago ho summarily dismissed about thirty members of the Department, and put others in their places, for political reasons only. The discharged men began suit for a reinstatement, claiming that they had been removed without cause. The case went from court to court until finally it reached the Supreme Court, where the claims of the discharged men were sustained. The costs in the case, which the city will have to pay, amount to $2.2(H), in addition to which the city is liable to have the fun of paying the salaries of the men for the full time since their discharge.
A panorama of tho St. .John tiro is being exhibited in Maine by one of the merchants who lost everything there, and is endeavoring to make a start, again.
