1815.] Account of the Sunderland Lime-stone Formation. 115 
water burst through extricated themselves by hastening to the shaft, 
but before the alarm could be spread to the more distant parts of the 
mine, where most of the men appear to have been at work, the 
water had formed an impassable barrier, and deprived them of all 
chance of retreat. 
It. may also occur in a similar manner, with respect to explosions 
of carbureted hydrogen, that men working at a certain part of the 
pit may be aware of danger from the state of the air in their imme- 
diate neighbourhood, and though not able to save themselves from 
injury or death, may by early alarm be the means of saving some of 
their comrades nearer the shaft, many of whom are sacrificed simply 
from not knowing that danger is at hand. For the purpose, then, 
of the better guarding against these evils, might it not be advisable 
and proper to have established throughout the mine a series of 
speaking trumpets, or alarum bells, arranged in such order as 
should convey with the greatest possible celerity intimations of 
danger to its various departments ? ; 
These, Sir, are all the remarks which occur to me at present, as 
worth while to trouble you with. There are many other con- 
trivances which might be proposed, and which might be adopted, 
with increased security to the miners, and certainly, at a yery 
moderate cost to the proprietors, But I fear I have already 
trespassed at too great length to presume to encroach any 
further. One observation there still remains to be made, that 
will apply to all these different causes of the loss of so many 
valuable lives, and it is this, that the accidents resulting from 
them in coal-mines must be daily becoming more frequent. From 
the very nature of the case, the more numerous, deep, and ex- 
tensive, the excavations become, the greater must. be the difficulty 
of avoiding wastes and old workings, where reservoirs of carbureted 
hydrogen, of carbonic acid gas, and especially of water, are in a 
state of unceasing accumulation. In a word, the subject is 
assuming a fearful importance, and must very soon extort from the 
public, and particularly from those more nearly interested, that 
attention which hitherto seems to have been partly withheld from it. 
Iam, Sir, your most obedient servant, 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Dircryados. 
June 13, 1815. 
ARTICLE V. 
An Account of the Sunderland Lime-stone Formation. By W. 
Reid Clanny, M.D. M.R.I.A. of Sunderland, 
(To Dr, Thotason.) 
DEAR SIR, - Sunderland, June 12, 1815. 
‘Wuen I had the pleasure of your short visit last summer, I 
forgot to show you the Pallion lime-works, the property of John 
H 2 
