ON EXPLOSIONS OF FIKE-DAMP IN COAL MINES. 
25 
by railway. It might have gone some way towards preventing 
the disaster altogether if it had been forcibly insisted on before- 
hand, that a sin, whose magnitude can scarcely be estimated, is 
committed every time a colliery proprietor employs an incompe- 
tent manager from short-sighted economy, or a collier lights a 
pipe in a tiery pit. 
The second remedy is by no means difScult of attainment. 
Many of the larger collieries have already attached to them, by 
the generosity of their proprietors, excellent schools, and the 
example thus set will doubtless be extensively followed. If 
clear and simple lectures, illustrated by experiments, were 
given in these schools from time to time on the rcdionale of 
colliery disasters, the rising generation of colliers would grow 
up with quite enough of scientific knowledge to cure them of 
the recklessness which disgraced their forefathers. 
That there is the mental grit in colliers which makes all that 
has been here suggested for their improvement possible, and a 
great deal more besides, no one who knows them well will for a 
moment deny, but they have not yet been shown how to turn it 
to account. With all their faults they are a hearty, shrewd 
race, and among them the writer has spent many a pleasant and 
profitable hour. 
