The Kentucky Gazette

A Scientific Experiment in the Paris Catacombs.

A Paris correspondent of the London Daily News writes to that journal:

"Captain Denarouze is proving to the savans that if miners henceforth perish from choke-damp it will not be through the fault of science. His demonstrations to this effect are made in the Catacombs, under the Rue d'Enfer. The theater of his experiments is a space formed by the intersection of two low galleries propped up with squat freestone pillars, and lined with skulls and tibias. These details are rendered visible by the light of flaring torches, such as one sees in the Bercy wine-vaults. In the center of the opening stands a large glass box, or rather chamber, which might have been borrowed from the managers of the Brighton Aquarium. Its inmates are not fishes, but a lordly dunghill cock, very proud at his scarlet throat decorations, and a rabbit which might be taken for an emblem of unintelligent vacillation and timidity. At the extremity of the glass chamber, furthest from the seats provided by Captain Denarouze for those who wish to look on at his experiments, lies a tin cylinder, closed at both ends. An india-rubber tube is inserted into the cylinder, of which more presently. When the performance is about to commence, a few more torches are lighted. A man dressed like a miner then comes forward, enters the glass chamber, which is closed on him hermetically, and then proceeds to work with a pickax, to the evident annoyance of the cock and the bewilderment of the rabbit. He has on his back a tin box shaped like a knapsack, and fastened to his breast a little lantern, with very powerful reflectors. As he stoops we observe that his nostrils are shut by means of a spring resembling the central part of a pair of spectacles We also see that he holds in his mouth a bone tube, from which proceeds another of gutta percha, ending in the knapsack. The man is in nowise embarrassed with this apparatus. He tears up the ground and moves about heavy blocks of freestone, crawls on his hands and knees, and acts as if he were in a mine instead of in a glass chamber in the Catacombs While he is so engaged the Captain explains that the knapsack is a sort of gasometer, containing a supply of vital air, and that the big cylinder contains a reserve fund. He then turns a cock, which he says is to fill the glass chamber with carbolic acid gas. Before many minutes elapse the vain glorious bird shows signs of physical discomfort, turns blue at the wattles, loses his lordly air, flaps his wings languidly, droops, goes off into a faint, and gives up the ghost. The rabbit's struggles for life are more convulsive, and his kicks go on for a longer time. While death thus invades the chamber, the miner works away, not minding the poisonous gas. His lamp, which also communicates with the knapsack, continues to burn bright, though four torches in the glass room have gone out for want of oxygen. The moment the light in it grows dim, the man understands that he must draw upon the reserved fund of vital air, from which he replenishes his portable gasometer. Hydrogen and oxygen gas are next turned in upon him; but he is not hurt by the inflammable atmosphere, for the flame of his lamp can not come in contact with it. The whole contrivance is so simple that one wonders it was not long ago invented. Captain Denarouze's miners knapsack was first suggested to him by the diving-bell, which, he flatters himself, his apparatus will supersede."