Dangerous Chemicals

Several more or less dangerous articles of chemical manufacture are becoming so largely employed for a variety of usef ui purposes now that some restrictions as to their sale, conveyance and storage are imperative, saj's the San Francisco Argonaut. Thousands of gallons of "liquid" carbonic acid gas in fcteel cylinders under high compression may now be seen every day being conveyed in carts from place to place, ajid similarly other gases are stored under pressure in "tubes," as, for instance, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrous oxide and so on, all of which may exposé the public to danger. Solid bricks of metallic Bodium, again (kept under naphtha, of course), are every day carried from port to port as part of a ship's cargo, and very serious accidenta have occasionally arisen from the intermixture of various chemicals on board ship by the damaging effect of a rough passage upon the packages. Still another chemical substance of eomparatively recent discovery is carbide of calcium, which on simply becoming moist gives off the exceedingly inflammable gas, acetylene, which, with air, f onns an explosive mixture.