PROCEEDINGS 1849 — 1858. 
271 
111 February, 1857, the great explosion occurred at Lund Hill, by 
which nearly two hundred people were destroyed. In the following 
July, Mr, Kichard Carter, of Halifax, read a paper to the Society on 
Colliery Ventilation. He traced the working of colheries through 
three phases. Half a century previously colliery workings were 
carried on at comparatively shallow depths, and most of the large 
establishments, such as Low Moor, Bowling, and Elsecar, had been 
planted in localities where valuable mineral seams had come to the 
surface, or lay at a moderate depth only below it. For a long period 
their operations of acquiring supplies of coal and iron were, therefore, 
carried on with far less risk and difficulty than they had now to con- 
tend with. Soon, however, the invention of the steam engine, and 
the great quantities of coal required for the manufacturers, led to a 
bolder system of penetrating the seams by means of shafts traversing 
the mineral stratum to a greater or less distance ; and the necessities 
of ventilation had ended in something like the scheme of in-take dis- 
tribution and up- cast, which we find in general operation at the present 
day ; but the proprietor hesitated at the expense of an additional 
shaft for the purpose of ventilation, and made in its place a shaft by 
tubbing or bratticiiig off a portion of the existing shaft, and thus 
performing all the operations of drawing the coal, taking in air for 
ventilating the works, and discharging the air after doing so within 
the area of one small aperture or shaft which, in all probability, was 
in its dimensions scarcely adequate for any one of the purposes 
separately. Latterly, the pits have had a second shaft provided for 
the return of air after ventilating the mine ; but there was still a 
lamentable ignorance on the part of both proprietors and men of the 
scientific principles w^hicli should be applied in obtaining ventilation, 
and in working the coal. The object of Mr. Carter's paper was to 
suggest a scientific method of getting rid of the accumulations of gas 
which always occur with gTeater or less frequency in the mine, and 
the plan he suggested was that the gas which is much lighter 
than atmospheric air and always ascends to the roof of the pit, 
should be allowed to make an exit at the highest point in the working 
which appeared to be in the direction it would naturally' take, rather 
than that it should be drawn by a current of air to the up-cast 
