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To the late Mr. Buddie, of Newcastle, the British nation 

 is under the greatest obligations for devising a new system of 

 working coal mines in panel-work. For instead of carrying 

 on the coal field winning in one extended area, it is divided 

 into quadrangular panels, each containing an area of from 

 eight to twelve acres, and round each panel is left at first a 

 solid wall of coal from forty to fifty yards thick. Through 

 the panel walls, roads and air courses are driven, in order to 

 work the coal contained within each. Thus all the panels, 

 as to roads and ventilation, are connected together with the 

 shaft. The pillars are twelve yards broad, and twenty-four 

 yards long, the boards four yards wide, and the thirlings or 

 slits from one board gate to another only five feet wide, for 

 the purpose of ventilation. 



The advantages of this method are ; — 



1. That the large solid walls round each panel keep ofi" 

 the pressure from the contained coal. 



2. That if any casualty, as to falls, crushes, ventilation, 

 or explosion occurs, the locality of the accident is at once 

 known. When the air is coursed some twenty or thirty miles, 

 if the ventilation becomes obstructed, as is usual in an ex- 

 plosion, it is not easily possible to determine where the 

 disaster occurs. 



3. If there be an explosion, it will be chiefly confined to 

 the panel where it occurs, and any irruption of water can, if 

 necessary, be confined in the panel. 



In the North of England it has been lately discovered that 

 the quantity of air introduced by a shaft of given magnitude 

 can be very much increased by dividing the underground cur- 

 rent into several currents, each taking a different direction ; 

 the length of the air-courses in well managed mines has been 

 greatly reduced, and is now rarely more than three or four 

 miles, whilst formerly the air had to pass from fifty to seventy 

 miles between the upcast and downcast shafts. It is, there- 



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