air making their coats sleek, and their docility is admirable. The stables are usually situated at the bottom of the shaft, and the horses are attended to by persons employed exclusively for the purpose.o

Hewers were formerly hired by the year, and their duty was exclusively to hew. They are now engaged by the month, and bound to lend a hand to any kind of labour requisite in the mine. They have to find their own candles, and when blasting is necessary, their own powder. A hewer will use a pound of candles, costing sixpence, in a week, and the wives and children search for and knead the fine-clay which forms the candlestick. The fuel of the Davy-lamp is not so expensive, but the hewer using it works in a worse light, and of course in a more dangerous position. Each man must have half-a-dozen or so of picks, which he pays the pit-smith to keep regularly in repair. Lights are supplied to the team-drivers by the pit the candles used for this purpose being called, we know not why, mistresses. The poor little putter, unless he provides himself with tallow, has to sit his twelve hours in total darkness. They are very indulgent parents who give their boys a couple of candles per day, to light them in and out of the pit, and the children complain grievously of the wearisomeness of the gloom, while not a few are haunted by supernatural horrors: this is especially the case after an accident, and in a locality where men have been killed, or where their bodies have lain. The pitmen will tell you that, after the first few hours, the constant cry of the trappers to all who pass their solitary station, is: Will it soon be time to cry kenner? the expression referring to a phrase shouted down the shaft by the banksman when the knocking-off hour arrives. There is generally a nightwatch kept upon the pit-heap; and at the proper hour the callsman,' as he is termed, proceeds to make the round of the pit-village, and to thunder his summons at every door. Two hours previously to this, a party, composed of what are called overmen and deputies,' have descended into the mine. The former are the working superintendents, holding positions, analogous to those of a boatswain's mate on board ship, or a corporal in a regiment. It is their business to see that all is safe and right in the pit ere the workmen descend. To the deputies is particularly intrusted the care of the wood-work of the pit, the traps, air-sluices, and brattices.' Unless these were kept in perfect order, the ventilation would be put an end to, and all working would be impracticable. When anything wrong is apprehended, the inspecting-party leave a rude caution, in the shape of a prop or a shovel flung across the path, as a signal to the hewers to go no further. Sometimes they write a word of warning or instruction on a shovel, and stick it, handledown, in the earth; but it by no means always happens, that in the first hewing-party is to be found a savant equal to the interpretation of the writing on the spade.

The clothes used in the pit are, as we have hinted, entirely of

coarse flannel. The wives and daughters are often competent to cut and sew them. If not, they are purchased at the slop-shop. A pit suit of good material and workmanship will cost about a pound; its constituents being, a long jacket, with large pockets; a waistcoat; a flannel shirt; a pair of short drawers, reaching to the middle of the thigh; a pair of stout trousers worn over them; and 'hoggers,' or worsted stockings, with the feet, for some insane reason, cut away. This would seem to be rather a warm costume for the work; and, in fact, the men very often labour without a stitch on them, save the short drawers aforesaid. The putters pursue, as we have seen, a different system, their working-dress leaving a large portion of the limbs exposed. As soon as the daily hours of toil are over, the pitman-not, however, until he has partaken of a meal-plunges himself into a huge tub of hot water, and scrubs until he becomes as clean as though he had never touched coal-dust; and, the ablutionary process finished, dresses in a style much superior to that of the general run of labourers. It is, indeed, difficult to believe that the clean, respectably-attired person who accosts you, is the same begrimed and three parts naked individual whose white, gleaming eyes and teeth you remember, as he turned from the wall of coal and held up his Davy for your convenience. We remember remarking, on one occasion, how uncommonly black a putter looked; when, an hour afterwards, he was pointed out to us, emerging from his house, his complexion nearly that of an albino, and a profusion of lint-white locks" streaming in curls down his cheeks.

The melancholy subject of accidents in mines has been the topic of immensely differing representations. At the opening of the Coal Exchange in London, it was alleged that upwards of 20,000 people had been killed in England by explosion since 1800. On the other hand, a pamphlet, published a few years ago by a working miner, and professing to give a record of every fatal accident in the Durham and Northumberland pits for the long space between 1756 and 1843, reckoned the total number as 1760 violent deaths; of which 1491 were due to explosion. Taking the northern coal-field as furnishing one-fourth of the entire accident mortality of English coal-pits, the miner's estimate would be far beneath that of 20,000 deaths for half a century. Taking another test, we find that collier-accident mortality in 1838 amounted to 349. Of this, however, only one-fourth resulted from explosion; so that a fair estimate of such deaths for half a century would amount to somewhere about 4500. We have already mentioned the increase in the number of explosions consequent upon the introduction of the Davy-lamp. The apparatus was intended as a safeguard, if accidentally and unknowingly carried into foul air, whereas it is often habitually and knowingly carried into foul air; a course of policy about as wise as that of wilfully running a ship among breakers, because a life-boat is on board. Nothing is more common than for a safety-lamp to be afire-that is, for a

constant series of small explosions to be taking place within it, although the wire prevents the flame from spreading. In such a case, the slightest accident to the lamp-a fall or the blow of a pick-would produce an instantaneous explosion. Yet men-men who might be expected to act with more prudence than the poor hewers-lose by habit so much of the sense of danger, as to be all but insensible to it. A scientific gentleman, deputed by government, was, not many years ago, examining the scene of a fatal explosion. He was accompanied by the under-viewer of the colliery, and as they were inspecting the edges of a goaf, it was observed that the Davys which they carried were afire.

"I suppose,' said the inspector, that there is a good deal of fire-damp hereabouts?'

"Thousands and thousands of cubic feet all through the goaf!' coolly replied his companion.

"Why,' exclaimed the official, do you mean to say that there is nothing but that shred of wire-gauze between us and eternity?'

Nothing at all,' said the under-viewer, very composedly. 'There's nothing here, where we stand, but that gauze-wire to keep the whole mine from being blown into the air!' The precipitate retreat of the government official on receiving this information was long a standing-joke in the pit.

This fearful scourge of explosive gas is produced by the distillation of carburetted hydrogen. The pure gas is inexplosive; but when mingled with eight times its volume of air, the mixture acquires powers more terrible than those of gunpowder. A mine explosion is a thing, unhappily, often heard of; but its terrible features are but seldom realised by the imagination. A light is brought into contact with the aerial agent; immediately it bursts with a smothered roar into a vast sea of scathing flame, flying from passage to passage, and corridor to corridor, wherever the explosive mixture exists, and dashing planking, brattices, and doors before it, as though they had been shattered by cannon-balls. In a pit near Newcastle, three men were employed near the shaft, building up the entrance to an old deserted working. Behind them, and at a few paces' distance, was a brattice or partition, extending down and across the shaft, and formed of seasoned three-inch planking. A candle was brought, the better to survey the masonry. Gas was present; it fired; and the three men were blown right through the three-inch planking, and literally smashed into pulp, on the opposite side of the shaft. In other cases, men have been shot out of the shaft like bullets out of a gun-barrel, and their blackened limbs and members have been found in adjoining fields. But, comparatively speaking, the loss of life from actual flame, or being dashed against the wall, is small. The worst comes after the explosion. No sooner has the sheet of flame spent itself, than volumes of carbonic acid gas, the fatal choke-damp, or the 'stythe,' as the miners call it-one breath of which in its pure state is deathcome rolling in suffocating fumes along the neighbouring passages.

The explosion has frequently broken the brattices and trap-doors. The ventilation of the mine is thus in a moment suspended, and the stythe works its deadly will.

It often happens that ten men are choked by after-damp for one burnt by the explosion. They are found, unscathed in face or limb, dead from suffocation. A serious explosion in a distant part of the pit is often made known in other portions only by the stoppage of the ventilating current. 'We felt, sir,' said a hewer to the writer-we felt the air chopped off from our mouths, and, without uttering one word, we flung down our picks, and ran to the shaft for life.' Occasionally, when gas lurks in a working, the ventilation of which is defective, the workmen will strip off their jackets, and actually brush and sweep it-the vapour always clinging to the roof-out into the main corridors, where the strong ventilating breeze sweeps it harmlessly away. Carbonic acid, though its dreaded state is that of choke-damp after an explosion, is sometimes generated spontaneously, but in such cases it is seldom fatal, because it increases so slowly, that it puts the lamps out, and thus forces the men to leave the place before it attains its suffocating power. Cases occasionally occur in which a modified form of the gas causes the wicks to burn so dimly, that boys have been hired by the hewers to keep swinging the lamps, in order to render the flame as bright as possible. The sanitary consequences of labour in such an atmosphere may be imagined; but still the men, with a stern indifference, toil on. The reckless carelessness, indeed, which very generally distinguishes them, is shewn in the not uncommon practice of opening the Davys, and taking out the candles, in order to have more light for working. That the gauze-wire, too, is not, under all circumstances, impervious to the transit of flame, is evident from the fact, that the men can sometimes light a pipe at the lamp without opening it. It must require a strong power of suction to bring the flame through the gauze;, but, as an old lampcleaner in a Northumberland pit told the writer, some on 'em had a rare twist with their pipes in their cheeks.' In more than one mine, however, the Clanny safety-lamp is taking the place of the Davy, to which it is decidedly superior. In general principle, the two lamps agree, for Dr Reid Clanny-still living a venerable old gentleman in Sunderland-demonstrated, two years before Sir Humphry Davy's discovery, the inability of flame to pass through gauze-wire. The Clanny-lamp is furnished with a glass cylinder, to protect the jet from draughts; and matters are so ordered, that when the air approaches the explosive point, the flame flickers and dies. The lamp is thus far safer than its competitor, and it gives twice as much light. Its disadvantages are, that it is heavier and more expensive.

How admirable soever the qualities of safety-lamps may be, the great safeguard of a miner is, after all, ventilation. To make things reasonably secure, the current of refreshing air ought ceaselessly to play through every nook and crevice of the mine. The

smallest quantum which ought to be sent through the main passages of a fifiery colliery is, in the opinion of competent witnesses, from 350 to 400 cubic feet per second; and in the better ventilated pits, upwards of 30,000 cubic feet do actually pass per minute. We have sometimes felt the cool, fresh stream passing us, at the strength of what a sailor would call a topgallant-sail breeze. In this respect, generally, the northern mines are infinitely superior to those of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Wales; but they still call for great reform. The work-people take a deep and natural interest in the subject, and the feeling among them is strong, that the present ventilating arrangements are insufficient. What they chiefly complain of, is a deficiency in the wood work of the mines, used for conducting the air throughout the boards and workings; and that too much duty is frequently demanded from the ventilating current. Thus, in some extensive old mines, the air has to travel upwards of seventy miles before it has performed its rounds, when, of course, it escapes in a very foul condition. In compliance with the demands of the mine population, inspectors have been lately appointed, and it would be well were they endowed with the powers of the government superintendents of cotton and cloth manufactories. Collieries require just as much, if not stricter control.

Mine accidents from explosion, we may add, always take place in greater frequency in summer than in winter, because the temperature of the pits and of the atmosphere being more equable in hot weather than in cold, the difficulty of keeping up the ventilating current at its proper speed is proportionally increased. According to a calculation which has been made by a local autho rity, out of 71 accidents, causing the loss of nearly 1000 lives, there occurred, in the winter months, 8 explosions; in the spring months, 13; in the summer months, 20; and in the autumn months, 30.

The common accident of the falling-in of the roof, is often caused by parsimony in using supporting-timber, or by want of skill and care in removing props when a goaf is to be formed. The men complain both of the stinginess with which timber is used, and of the carelessness of the deputies, whose business it is to see to this department of the pit

Shaft accidents were formerly nearly as common and fatal as those from explosion; but the improvements in the machines for ascending and descending have of late greatly diminished their frequency. An important step was made in the introduction of cages for the men to ride in, and in the improved system of signal communication between the top and bottom of the pit. Formerly, the miners used to fasten the hooks on which the tubs were hung to links in the chain, and passing one leg through the loop, grasp the chain, and so swing up or down. Often each adult took a boy upon his knee, while half-a-dozen boys above them clung, one over the other, to the chain. The last two or three could not secure their places until the engine was actually in motion, and then