142 



NATURE 



{Dec. 10, 1885 



I have now attempted to give you an outline of the progress 

 made within the last few years towards a thorough compre- 

 hension of the nature and causes of those dangers which most 

 prominently direct public attention to the perils of the miner's 

 calling — and of the advances already made, and rapidly pro- 

 gressing, towards the provision of the miner with really safe and 

 efficient underground illumination, with efficient substitutes for 

 explosives for a large proportion of the work connected with 

 coal mining, and w ith safe methods of using explosive agents 

 where these cannot be dispensed with ; so safe that the terrors 

 which have attended blasting in mines may be confidently ex- 

 pected speedily to fade away. I venture to think it will have 

 demonstrated that we have made most satisfactory and import- 

 ant progress in all of these several directions, thanks to the 

 labours of professional associations, of scientific and practical 

 experts, and, I think I may also say, thanks to the exertions of 

 the Royal Commission on Accidents in Mines. 



I have been led to refer more fully than I had first intended 

 to the work performed by the Royal Commission — the results of 

 which, in detail, will shortly be in the hands of the public — 

 because I felt sure that the members of the Society of Arts w ould 

 take a most lively and sympathetic interest in the labours of men, 

 who have not allowed themselves to be discouraged by unjust 

 attacks and ignorant criticism, from endeavouring to carry to a 

 useful termination the arduous work which they cheerfully took 

 upon themselves. 



The Commissioners have been silent while hard things have 

 been said of them ; but it were idle to deny that they have 

 acutely felt the injustice reflected upon them by some writers in 

 the public Press who, while posing as judges or philanthropists, 

 have not earned for themselves, by knowledge acquired, or by 

 work perforaied, the right to criticism. 



Thirty years' personal experience of the work of experimental 

 Committees has taught me that ad interim reports are not un- 

 frequently worse than valueless, and this would certainly have 

 been the case had the Commissioners attempted to make any 

 so-called progress reports, because conclusions, or suggestions, 

 might have been put forward in them which would have had to 

 be afterwards recalled, or incomplete data given, which might 

 have been m.isleading, and, therefore, even dangerous. 



As regards the question of the unsafe nature of certain so-called 

 safety lamps, however, I have pointed out that the Com- 

 missioners, just five years ago, reported to the Home Secretary 

 in no hesitating terms, in the belief that their statements would 

 have been published, — and it is no fault of theirs that the public 

 was not informed of their strongly-expressed conclusions on this 

 subject, but has been, on the contrary, recently told in the Times 

 by a well-known mining engineer that the results of the Royal 

 Commission's labours " have not even extended to the official 

 condemnation of the known unsafe lamps. " 



The daily journals have at .any rate chronicled the activity of 

 the Commission by recording the dates and locale of their 

 frequent meetings, — and have been cognisant, therefore, of the 

 fact that their place of work was easily accessible. This being 

 so, it is somewhat matter for surprise that the writer of very 

 condemnatory paragraphs in an editorial article, suggested by 

 correspondence published in the Times last June, should not 

 have cared, in the first instance, to inform himself, however 

 imperfectly, of the kind of work upon which the Commission 

 was engaged, and to take that opportunity of seeking some little 

 correct information on the subjects with which his graphic pen 

 was directed to deal. Had he done so, he would scarcely have 

 instructed the public that "a huge majority of coUiery accidents 

 arise from explosions ; " that "coal mines generate an explosive 

 gas, which, when collected in a quantity, and exposed to a flame, 

 ignites, and blows into fragments the workings in which the 

 vapour and flame meet;" "that every coal mine has its 

 explosive gas," or that "often the miner has opened the door 

 of his lamp to light up the cavern, already perhaps darkening 

 with the heaviness of a gas-laden atmosphere." 1 will do him 

 the justice to believe that he would not have felt disposed, after 

 even very brief inquiry, to indorse as " not exaggerated " the 

 declaration of the "strenuous and benevolent correspondent," 

 Mr. Ellis Lever, "that the delay in the issue of the Commission's 

 Report was "to the eternal discredit of Royal Commissions." 



After all, however, it rests entirely with the public Press to 

 decide for itself whether the ends it has in view are such as to 

 render it desirable to seek for correct information before 

 administering public condemnation. 



But, with a public official, especially^whemconnected with the 



very Department of State most directly concerned in the work 

 of the Commission, the case is very different ; and it is scarcely 

 to be credited that the gentleman intrusted with reporting to 

 the Home .Secretary upon the circumstances attending the 

 explosion last summer, at Clifton Hall Colliery, should not have 

 thought it worth his while to ascertain, by inquiry, which could 

 not but have been of immediate sen'ice to him, whether the 

 delay in the completion of the Commissioners' Report was 

 " unaccountable." 



To this Society, which has always distinguished itself by its 

 encouragement of earnest workers, and by its just judgment of 

 their labours, 1 have ventured, as one of its members, to malie 

 these comments, which could not be uttered by me in my capacity 

 as a member of Her Majesty's Commission, whose duty it is 

 simply to report the results of their labours when they have, to 

 the best of their judgment, fulfilled the duties imposed upon 

 them. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Royal Society, November 19. — .\bstract of " Iveport on a 

 Series of Specimens of the Deposits of the Nile Delta, obtained 

 by the recent Boring Operations." By J. W. Judd. F.R.S., 

 Professor of Geology in the Normal School of Science and Royal 

 School of Mines. Communicated by order of the Delta Com- 

 mittee. 



Neither of the borings made for the Royal .Society, under the 

 superintendence of the engineers attached to the army of occu- 

 pation in Egypt, appears to have reached the rocky floor of the 

 Nile-Valley, nor do the samples examined show any indication 

 of an approach to such floor. What were at first supposed to 

 be pebbles in one of the samples from Tantah, prove on ex- 

 amination to be calcareous concretions ("race," or " kunkur "1. 

 Nevertheless, these borings appear to have reached a greater 

 depth than all previous ones in the same district with one or two 

 exceptions. The deepest of the three borings now reported upon 

 have been carried to 73 and 84 feet respectively. 



The samples from these borings, like those examined hy Mr. 

 Horner, show that the delta-deposits all consist of admixtures, 

 in various proportions, of blown-sand and alluvial-mud. I can find 

 no evidence to support the suggestion made by Sir J. W. Dawson, 

 F. R.S., from a hasty examination of the specimens, that " at 

 a depth of 30 or 40 feet the alluvi.al mud rests on desert sand ; " 

 on the contrary these borings, like those of older date, show 

 that the deposits of the Nile Valley consist of a succession of 

 different beds in some of which sand, and in others mud, forms 

 the predominant constituent. 



The sands, when separated from the mud by washing, are 

 found to be made up of two kinds of grains, the larger being 

 perfectly rounded and polished, while the smaller, on the con- 

 trary, are often subangular or .angular. 



The larger and well-rounded grains may be described as micro- 

 scopic pebbles ; their surfaces are most exquisitely smoothed and 

 polished, and their forms are either globular or ellipsoidal. In 

 size they vary greatly, being occasionally as large as a small 

 pea. They only very occasionally exhibit traces of deposits of 

 iron-oxides upon their surfaces. 



Embedding these grains in Canada balsam, and examining 

 them by transmitted light, with the aid of the polariscope, we 

 are in nearly all cases enabled to determine their mineral cha- 

 racters. The majority of the grains consist of colourless quartz, 

 though occasionally rose-quartz, amethystine quartz, citrine, and 

 smoky quartz also occur. This quartz exhibits unmistakable 

 evidence of having been derived from granitic rocks ; it is con- 

 stantly seen to be traversed by bands of liquid- and gas-cavities, 

 and very frequently contains numerous black hair-like inclusions 

 (rutile ?). IVIuch more rarely we detect grains of quartz which 

 consist of aggregates of small crystals, and are evidently derived 

 from metamorphic rocks. With the pure quartz grains we find 

 also a considerable number of rounded particles of red and 

 brown jasper and of black Lydian stone, with fragments of 

 silicified wood. 



But in addition to the different varieties of quartz, particles of 

 felspar are found in considerable abundance among these large 

 rounded grains. What is very remarkable about these felspar- 

 grains is the slight traces of kaolinisation which they exhibit ; 

 they are, in fact, almost as fresh and unaltered as the grains of 

 quartz themselves. Ordinary orthoclase and microline are 



