264 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



miners now engaged in our coal mines is far in excess 

 of the number employed at the beginning of the present 

 century. Thus accidents in the present day are at once 

 more common on account of the increased rapidity with 

 which the mines are worked, and when they occur there 

 are more sufferers ; so that the frequency of colliery 

 explosions in the opening years of the present century 

 and the number of deaths resulting from them, are in 

 reality much more significant than they seem to be 

 at first sight. But even independently of this con- 

 sideration, the record of the colliery accidents which 

 took place at that time is sufficiently startling. Seventy- 

 two persons were killed in a colliery at North Biddick 

 at the commencement of the present century. Two 

 explosions in 1805, at Hepburn and Oxclose, left no 

 less than forty-three widows and 151 children un- 

 provided for. In 1808, ninety persons were killed 

 in a coal-pit at Lumley. On May 24, 1812, ninety- 

 one persons were killed by an explosion at Felling 

 Colliery, near Gateshead. And many more such 

 accidents might readily be enumerated. 



(From the Daily Newt, December 4, 1868.) 



