20 
attended with such danger as to cause almost weekly some fright- 
ful and fatal accidents, and to exercise morally a pernicious 
influence on the character of the colliers ; whilst it has necessi- 
tated the leaving of so large a proportion in “ pillars ” and 
“ribs”, that only from 11,000 to 15,000 tons of coal have been 
obtained out of 40,000 contained in the acre. Here then is a 
loss to the national wealth of useful life, and of about two thirds 
of the finest fossil fuel in Britain, the money value of which 
would amount to many millions. Yet for twenty years past, in 
that very district, one group of pits has been worked on a 
system by which the coal is taken in two successive stages, where 
the men work in comparative safety, and where, instead of 
1 1,000 or 15,000, 26,000 tons are realised per acre, although the 
seam is there of less than its average thickness. Consider 
only for one moment the beneficial effects of improved means of 
extracting the coal from our mines : it is supposed that the 
total quantity annually brought into use amounts to above 30 
millions of tons ; and if an economy of but threepence per ton 
were effected, by reducing friction, ineffective labour, or other 
sources of wasted power, a sum of nearly 400,000?. per annum 
would be saved to the country. 
We must omit to speak of the modes of transport along the 
underground roads, of raising the minerals to the surface, and 
of pumping the subterraneous water, accomplished by an amaz- 
ing variety cf apparatus and machines. Nor can we dwell upon 
that important subject of ventilation, to which our attention is 
so often and forcibly called by the fearful catastrophes occurring 
in our mines from its absence or mismanagement. I would 
only call attention to the rude method of dispersing noxious 
gases figured by Agricola 300 years ago, and in some of our 
districts still adopted, under the term of “ brushing out the sul- 
phur,” as the only means of rendering a place safe for the men 
to work in. But although even at that early day more refined 
processes had been introduced, as evinced by his description of 
the ventilating fans, let us compare all those puny means, and 
the efficiency of ventilation in the great bulk of our collieries 
with the skilfully applied and fiercely blazing furnaces of some 
of the great northern mines, where a current of 150,000, or in 
