40 REPORT—1890. 
contained electric lamp can be expected to compete successfully with the 
greatly improved miners’ lamps which are now in use, or available. 
The recent legislation in connection with mines is certainly deficient 
in any sufficiently decisive measure for excluding from mine-workings 
certain forms of lamps which, while fairly safe in the old days of sluggish 
ventilation, are unsafe in the rapid air-currents now frequently met with 
in mines; it is, however, very satisfactory to know that the strong repre- 
sentations on this subject made by the late Commission, combined with 
force of example and with the conclusive demonstration, by exhaustive ex- 
periments, of the superiority of other lamps, have led within the last two 
years to the very general abandonment of the unprotected Davy, Clanny, 
and Stephenson lamps in favour, either of simple, safe modifications of 
these, or of other safe and efficient lamps, and that one possible element 
of danger to the miner has thus been eliminated, at any rate in many 
districts. In one important respect recent improved legislation has failed 
to effect a most desirable change, namely, in the substitution of safety- - 
lamps for naked lights in workings where small local accumulations of 
fire-damp are discovered from time to time. There appears little doubt 
that one of the three fearful explosions which have occurred within the last 
twelve months—the catastrophe at Llanerch Colliery, near Pontypool— 
was caused by the continued employment of naked lights in a mine where 
inspection constantly revealed the presence of fire-damp. This explosion, 
and two other terrible disasters, at Mossfield Colliery, in Staffordshire, 
and at Morfa Colliery, near Swansea, which have occurred since the last 
meeting of the Association, may have seemed to weaken the belief that 
the operation of the recent Mines Regulation Act, which was based upon 
some of the results of seven years’ arduous labour of the late Mines 
Commission, must have resulted in very substantial improvement in 
the management of mines and in the conduct of work by the men. 
Happily, however, there is a consensus of opinion among those most 
competent to judge—i.e. the Government Mine Inspectors—that very 
decided benefits have already accrued from the operation of the new Act. 
Although far from embodying all that the experienced mine-owners, 
miners, and scientific workers upon that Commission, as well as practical 
authorities in Parliament, concurred in regarding as reasonably adaptable, 
from the results of observation and experiment, to the furtherance of the 
safer working of mines, this Act does include measures, precautionary 
and preventive, of undeniable utility, well calculated to lessen the dangers 
which surround the miner, and to add to his personal comfort underground. 
We may hope, moreover, that the operation of the Act is paving the way to 
more comprehensive legislation in the near future ; for it can scarcely be 
doubted, by the light of recent sad experience, that there are directions in 
which both masters and men still hesitate to adopt, of their own free will, 
measures or regulations, methods of working or appliances and precau- 
tions, which are calculated to be important additional safeguards against 
