This action was brought by the plaintiff in error against the defendant in error upon a policy of fire insurance issued by the defendant insuring the plaintiff against all direct loss or damage by fire on certain coal stored on the premises situated at the northwest corner of Howard and Spear streets, in the city of San Francisco, the policy, however, containing the provision that the insurance company—

The trial resulted in a verdict for the insurance company.

No question is made upon the evidence, the case being brought here upon objections of the plaintiff to the instructions given the jury, which are, in part, as follows;

The question in the case being whether the earthquake was the proximate cause of the loss sued for, is it true, as matter of law, that, if the 'earthquake started the great fire which followed it, it necessarily constituted the proximate cause of the loss in the burning of every building or other thing to which such fires spread, without regard to the time elapsing between such starting of the original fires and the time of the burning of the particular building or thing in question, or its distance from the places where such starting of the fires occurred? It is a matter of common knowledge that the major portion of a great city cannot be destroyed, even by fire, in a single day, and that, in the nature of things, in an effort to stop such a great conflagration as that which destroyed almost all of the business section and much of the residence portion of San Francisco, there will be intervening events, such as explosions, back-firing, and dynamiting, and that the course of the flames may be changed by windstorms and other natural causes. The instructions complained of take no note of any of those things.

The case of Insurance Company v. Tweed, 7 Wall. 44 , 19 L. Ed. 65 , was based upon a policy of insurance by which certain cotton in a warehouse was insured against fire, the policy containing an exception against fire which might happen “by means of any invasion, insurrection, riot or civil commotion, or any military or usurped power, explosion, earthquake, or hurricane.” In that case the Supreme Court said:

The explosion in that case, as stated by the same court in the subsequent case of Scheffer v. Railroad Company, 105 U. S. 249, 251 , 26 *749 L. Ed. 1070 , “took place in the Marshall warehouse, which threw down the walls of the Alabama warehouse—the one insured, situated across the street from the Marshall warehouse—and by this means, and by the sparks from the Eagle Mill, also fired by the explosion, facilitated by the direction of the wind, the Alabama warehouse was burned.” Yet the Supreme Court held, in Scheffer v. Railroad Company, that the Tweed Case “went to the verge of the sound doctrine in holding the explosion to be the proximate cause of the loss of the Alabama warehouse.” And it did so, the court said, because the fire extended at once from the Marshall warehouse, where the explosion occurred, and because no new or intervening cause appeared.

In the case of Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469 , 24 L. Ed. 256 , the sparks from a steam ferryboat had, through the negligence of its owner, the defendant, set fire to an elevator, and the sparks from the elevator had set fire to plaintiff’s sawmill and lumber yard, which were from three to four hundred feet from the elevator. The court was requested to charge the jury that the injury sustained by the plaintiff was too remote from the negligence to afford a ground for a recovery. Instead of this, the court submitted to the jury to find—

The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling, and, in commenting on the difficulty of ascertaining in each case the line between the proximate and the remote causes of a wrong for which a remedy is sought, said:

In the case of Insurance Co. v. Boon, 95 U. S. 117 , 24 L. Ed. 395 , the action was to recover upon an insurance policy upon goods, wares, and merchandise destroyed by fire in October, 1864, in a store at the city of Glasgow, Mo. The policy contained the following exceptions:

The policy had reference to conditions prevailing in Missouri during the Civil War. The city of Glasgow was attacked on the 15th of October, 1864, by an armed force of Confederates, under military organization, who surrounded and attacked the city. It was defended by the Union forces, but when it became apparent that the city could not be successfully defended, in order to prevent the military stores deposited in the city hall from falling into the possession of the Confederate forces, the city hall was set on fire, and it, with its contents, *750 was destroyed. Without other interference, agency, or instrumentality, the fire spread to the building next adjacent to the city hall, and from building to building through two other intermediate buildings to the store containing the goods insured, and destroyed them. During the time and until the fire had consumed such goods, the battle between the contending forces continued, and no surrender had taken place, nor had any of the Confederate forces entered the city. The court, referring to the law applicable to such a case, said:

And, in referring to the case of Milwaukee Railway Co. v. Kellogg, supra, the court said:

The court held that, by reason of the events being so linked together as to form one continuous whole, the fire was excepted from the risks undertaken by the insurers.

In the case of The G. R. Booth, 171 U. S. 450 , 19 Sup. Ct. 9, 43 L. Ed. 234 , these facts appeared: The steamship G. R. Booth was discharging her cargo at a dock in New York; part of it consisted of a number of cases of detonators. While she was being unladen, one of the cases exploded, making a large hole in the side of the ship, in the No. 4 hold, in consequence of which sea water rapidly entered the No. 4 hold and passed through into No. 3 hold, where there was a cargo of sugar belonging to the libelant, damaging the sugar. The bill of lading contained a proviso that:

In the District Court the libel of the owner of the sugar was dismissed. The Circuit Court of Appeals certified the facts to the Supreme Court, and asked for instructions upon the following question:

The Supreme Court answered the question in the negative, saying in the course of its opinion:

In the light of these decisions of the Supreme Court, we think the court below went much too far in instructing the jury, as it specifically did, that if they should find and believe from the evidence—

The contract of insurance here involved has a further important provision. In enumerating excepted losses, it is provided that the insurance company shall not be liable for losses caused by explosion of any kind, unless fire ensue, and, in that event, for the damage by fire only. Fire was the peril insured against, but when there was an explosion, the company, wishing to limit its liability to the damage by fire and exclude damage by the explosion, provided for a loss by explosion of any kind, providing a fire ensued, and then for the damage by the fire only. Where it has been ascertained that the proximate cause of a fire has been an explosion, the inquiry must stop there; it cannot go further and inquire as to the proximate cause of the proxi *752 mate cause, for, as said by the Supreme Court in Scheffer v. Railroad Co., supra, “such a course of possible or even logical argument would lead back to that ‘great first cause least understood’ in which the train of all causation ends.”

Notwithstanding this clear limitation of the inquiry, the court be-. low instructed the jury as follows:

As a matter of course, the earthquake did not, and could not have, directly set the coal on fire. At most it created conditions from which fires were or may have started, possibly by the crossing of wires, or the upsetting of lamps or stoves, in various places in the city more or less remote from the insured coal. Under the specific instructions referred to, the jury, in determining whether the earthquake was the proximate or remote cause of the fire that injured the subject of the action, could not be controlled by, nor, indeed, give any consideration to, the circumstances whether or not any of the fires that were started, or may have been started, by the earthquake, extended “at once” to the insured property, as in the Tweed Case, or within any period of time which would serve as a reasonable connection between them, nor as to whether there were any new or intervening causes between the fires that were started or may have been started by the earthquake, and that which caused the loss sued for, such as explosion, back-firing, dynamiting, the course or force of the winds, if any such occurred, nor, in short, any of the “attending circumstances” referred to by the Supreme Court in the cases hereinbefore mentioned—all of which, in our opinion, were proper matters for the consideration of the jury in determining whether fire or fires started by the earthquake were the proximate cause of the damage to the insured coal.

For the reasons stated, the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded to the court below for a new trial.