Scenes And Incidents From The Life Of A Practical Miner
With A Treatise On The Ventilation Of Coal Mines

8 you tl) at are practising in the capacity of master wastemen, at once com- mence to increase the area of your air-returning passages, and you will daily increase the volume or quantity of air. I need not attempt to give you the relative measurements for the ingoing and the return passages, as in an extensive mine they are variable; but I tell you this, that if your drift at the down-cast pit be 40 feet, the united measurement of your passages approaching the furnace should not be less than 100 feet. By way of illustration, I will relate circumstances that occured at the colliery with which I was connected. Some years previous to my taking charge of the ventilation, it so happened that the parties then concerned aired two districts with one volume or division of air, taking it first into the innermost part of the mine, where whole working places only were in operation, and as it returned from this district it was taken into the other where both whole and broken, or pillar workings, were in process; but such was the vitiated state of the air when it returned from tins first district, that it was frightful to look at, so much so that the master appointed three men of experience to watch it night and day, stopping eight hours each. Notwithstanding this precaution, such was the dread of danger that the men occasionally refused to work, and so perniciously did it operate on the health and constitutions of individual men that they were obliged to quit the colliery and go elsewhere to work. And, as if no improvement whatever could be made, the men and boys had to work with the safety lamp in this unwholsome atmosphere. I found the evil sprung from the corrupt state of the return passages, several of which were little better than a mass of rat-holes, nien crawling on their bellies to get through. The incident of being left in the dark occurred to my memory, and furnished me with the material of improve- ment. I instantly began to enlarge the return passages, taking the worst parts first and as we progressed with the work we got an increase of air, which was our object. We persevered in improving the old, and paid (hie attention to the formation of the new, and in two years we could congratu- late ourselves upon a sufficiency of air for any emergency, with not the slightest symptom of approaching danger. . . Now you will learn from this, that all the magic necessary to be used is to form your passages for the air in unison with the laws of Nature What you have to do is to make ample provision for conducting the air back to the furnace, and when there, it meets with a fresh impulse in the restora- tion of its former elasticity by the agency of caloric, and all is sate. . Having said this much for quantity, let me now speak of mechanical application, and in the absence of perfect plans of our principal explosions, it will be necessary to show you a district section of a plan, so that you may lie able to follow the instructions, and the more clearly see the utility of iny scheme First, we will take the plan of Burradon, as presented to the public by the authorities of that colliery, and I wish it to be understood that I do this with no intention to offend; and if any man feels aggrieved at what I say, I ask him to remember that individual interest must some- times be set aside for the general good; while it must be admitted that none is so able to instruct others as one who, for himself and by his own almost unaided efforts, has learnt to grapple with and overcome difhculties