216 BOOK VI. 



they do not descend into the shafts nor enter the tunnels again before Monday, 

 and in the meantime the poisonous fumes pass away. 



There are also times when a reckoning has to be made with Orcus, 24 

 for some metalliferous localities, though such are rare, spontaneously 

 produce poison and exhale pestilential vapour, as is also the case with some 

 openings in the ore, though these more often contain the noxious fumes. 

 In the towns of the plains of Bohemia there are some caverns which, 

 at certain seasons of the year, emit pungent vapours which put out lights 

 and kill the miners if they linger too long in them. Pliny, too, has left 

 a record that when wells are sunk, the sulphurous or aluminous vapours 

 which arise kill the well-diggers, and it is a test of this danger if a burning 

 lamp which has been let down is extinguished. In such cases a second well 

 is dug to the right or left, as an air-shaft, which draws off these noxious 

 vapours. On the plains they construct bellows which draw up these noxious 

 vapours and remedy this evil ; these I have described before. 



Further, sometimes workmen slipping from the ladders into the shafts 

 break their arms, legs, or necks, or fall into the sumps and are drowned ; 

 often, indeed, the negligence of the foreman is to blame, for it is his special 

 work both to fix the ladders so firmly to the timbers that they cannot break 

 away, and to cover so securely with planks the sumps at the bottom of the 

 shafts, that the planks cannot be moved nor the men fall into the water ; 

 wherefore the foreman must carefully execute his own work. Moreover, 

 he must not set the entrance of the shaft-house toward the north wind, 

 lest in winter the ladders freeze with cold, for when this happens the men's 

 hands become stiff and slippery with cold, and cannot perform their office 

 of holding. The men, too, must be careful that, even if none of these things 

 happen, they do not fall through their own carelessness. 



Mountains, too, slide down and men are crushed in their fall and perish. 

 In fact, when in olden days Rammelsberg, in Goslar, sank down, so many 

 men were crushed in the ruins that in one day, the records tell us, about 

 400 women were robbed of their husbands. And eleven years ago, part 

 of the mountain of Altenberg, which had been excavated, became loose and 

 sank, and suddenly crushed six miners ; it also swallowed up a hut and one 

 mother and her little boy. But this generally occurs in those mountains 

 which contain venae cumulatae. Therefore, miners should leave numerous 

 arches under the mountains which need support, or provide underpinning. 

 Falling pieces of rock also injure their limbs, and to prevent this from hap- 

 pening, miners should protect the shafts, tunnels, and drifts. 



The venomous ant which exists in Sardinia is not found in our mines. 

 This animal is, as Solinus 25 writes, very small and like a spider in shape ; it 

 is called solifuga, because it shuns (fugit) the light (solem). It is very common 



24 Orcus, the god of the infernal regions, otherwise Pluto. 



26 Caius Julius Solinus was an unreliable Roman Grammarian of the 3rd Century. There 

 is much difference of opinion as to the precise animal meant by solifuga. The word is variously 

 spelled solipugus, solpugus, solipuga, solipunga, etc., and is mentioned by Pliny (vm., 43), 

 and other ancient authors all apparently meaning a venomous insect, either an ant or a 

 spider. The term in later times indicated a scorpion. 



