108 On Coal Manes. {Ave. 
The result of these experiments, fully prove, in the opinion of 
this Committee, 
That the apparatus invented by Mr. Edgeworth is adequate to the 
urpose for which it is intended : 
That it may be considered as a sure criterion of the relative draft 
of carriages :° 
That very short perches do not contribute to the ease of drafts: 
That the dangerous system of loading the tops of carriages is by 
no means advantageous. . 
Signatures to the Report of the Committee respecting Mr. 
Edgeworth’s experiments :—R. B. Bryan, Charles Cobbs Beresford, 
Robert Hutton, N. P. Leader, Richard Griffith, jun. John Patten, 
Richard Wynne, J. Lester Foster, and P. D. La Touche. 
_Articie IV. 
On Coal Mines. By ®irayahos. 
(To Dr. Thomson.) 
SIR, 
Tae numerous accidents which have of late years happened in 
the coal-mines of this district, have been productive of sorrow and 
wretchedness to many, and have excited commiseration and horror 
in all. To hear of 50, 60, nay 100, of one’s fellow creatures being 
suddenly shut up within the bowels of the earth, a certain propor- 
tion of them instantaneously destroyed,* the rest left to perish, either 
by hunger or slow suffocation, is such a piece of intelligence as 
shocks and outrages every feeling of the heart; yet it is a calamity 
which the inhabitants of the district of the Tyne and Wear are 
doomed very frequently to deplore. The risk and the frequency of 
these misfortunes are doubtless owing in no small degree to the 
_great depth and extent to which the workings of the coal-mines 
penetrate, and the difficulty thence arising of avoiding wastes, and 
of maintaining the air in a state fit for combustion and respiration, 
To a certain degree, therefore, they are perhaps unavoidable. But 
what tends greatly to embitter the regret felt on their occurrence, is 
the alleged prevalence of a certain disinclination in those concerned 
in the working of coal-mines, either to communicate information on 
the subject in general, or to promote, with all the zeal that might 
be expected of them, those measures necessary for the discovery of 
the means of preventing accidents. Unhappily, the air of secrecy, 
_ * In the many fatal accidents which have occurred within my knowledge from 
_explosions of inflammable gas, I think 1 may venture to assert, that not more thau 
one-fourth of the persons they have ultimately killed have been the victims of their 
immediate effects ; three-fourths of them almost invariably perish by suffocatioay 
(Vide First Report of the Sunderland Society, p. 12.) ‘ 
