Cut Food in Promoting Insalivation. 77 



frequently gathered to make a very good bed. I 

 have seen a week's supply of hay and corn lying 

 exposed to the dust flying from the pit mouth, as 

 well as steam, condensing as it falls from the 

 boilers, and, in common instances, to the rain 

 of one or two nights in addition, before being 

 sent down. The former kind of unsystematic 

 arrangement was of frequent occurrence at one 

 pit, but no kind of remonstrance succeeded in 

 effecting an alteration. 



Pit animals are usually kept twelve hours at 

 work, and in many cases, without food and water* 

 or at least without a satisfactory amount of either, 

 and seldom periods of rest. 



I have known animals kept from their stable 

 thirty-six hours at a time, and when complaints 

 have been made they have been met with a stout 

 denial from the powers that be ; or, where denial 

 has been useless, it has been assigned as a cause, 

 that the veterinary surgeon has not provided a 

 sufficient number of animals for the working of 

 the pit, an office which he does not include among 

 his duties without express orders. f 



Such long fasts act very prejudicially upon 



* The practice is not so common as formerly. In some pits 

 it is abolished, but slumbers in others. 



f Lord Kinnaird, in his letter to the Home Secretary on the 

 Fearndale Colliery explosion, dated 15th November, 1867, has 

 fully shown the aspect of colliery affairs when he quotes the 

 words of the miner, who says, "If peop'es as knows dared to 

 8{eak, thestf things would soon be stopped ." 



