96 
NATURE STUDY. 
The coal next passes into a series of four or five screens 
and is “jigged” being washed at the same time. 
The screens are of different sizes, from one comes the 
“Rice” coal, the “Rice” Nos. i, 2 and Pea being very small. 
There is also “Buckwheat,” “Chestnut,” “Egg,” (which 
is the most expensive and is commonly used in stoves,) 
“Furnace,” etc. The huge lumps, uncrushed, are less ex¬ 
pensive, and are used in ocean steamships and the like. 
The very small sizes cannot be used without increase of 
draught. 
After crushing, screening and washing, the coal falls 
down the chutes into cars at the foot of the breaker. 
Entrance may be made to the underground mine at Haz¬ 
leton through a vertical shaft about 500 feet deep in which 
run two cages alternately, controlled by a mechanism that 
looks like large drums over which wire ropes wind, or by 
riding in cars down the slope which is an inclined plane of 
30 degrees at first, 40 degrees below, and has a length of 
1086 feet and a vertical depth of 540 feet. To one looking 
in at the mouth of the slope, the lamps carried by passen¬ 
gers going down appear only as retreating stars without pow 
er to penetrate the .intense blackness. To those in the car 
there is total darkness until a dark but clean chamber is 
reached where huge pumps with a capacity for 30,000 gal¬ 
lons per hour are going constantly. Overhead, it is pret¬ 
tily decorated with fern and other fossils, which are found 
only in the shale and slate. 
From the slope run gangways on either side, longitud¬ 
inally with the seam or vein of coal, and from these are 
made openings, at regular intervals into the coal seam, 
which follow • the dip of the rock and are called breasts. 
Through the gangways is laid a track, over which the coal 
is drawn by mules, and both gangways and breasts are 
heavily timbered to support the loose coal above. 
Workings are pushed out at different levels from the 
