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

23 y<is ever asked any questions upon the subject. The man that hewed in ns 1101 th board, at this time, was William Robinson (living yet), and wi venture to say that he never knew anything about this vast accu- nm a ion of gas; nor, indeed, was it known to more than a very few of the Y°! ,-nlGp °11 colliery. You will see that if I had not gone into this 1S n<fi • S^’ 011 Monday morning, the deputy and the men would have gone ieir accustomed way, candle in hand, when, in the twinkling of an fK ■ '-l flWou^ ^ave been over with them in this life. As I have told you, ' 1 p ammable gas extended itself three-quarters of a mile beyond the en o t le other working districts, so that if any explosion had. taken p ace, even the men situated beyond the range of the explosive blast W0U . ave been killed with the choke damp. I, therefore, enjoy the conso a 1011 of having, more than cnce, averted the effects of those dire- lui catastrophes that too frequently visit the miners’ home. Why should icj lemam 111 jeopardy? “ The atmospheric air is equally pliable in all 1 s operations m the mine, when guided by judicious care, as steam in the lands of the artisan in its wonderfully vast and beneficial results. Both steam and gas are elastic fluids, and in each the elasticity arises from caloric being chemically combined with the solid particles, of which it is composed, and atmospheric air yields to the slightest impulse, and is put m motion, with the exactest ease.” Let me give you another illustration, during my time of practice at Coxlodge Colliery. A stone drift was driven to west, though underneath some old workings, and after going a certain distance beyond, it was found necessary to set off a drift, or perpendicular shaft, passing through strata of eleven fathoms and two feet thick (including between four and five fathoms up), of layers of blue stone, or what I suppose chemists will call a compound of silica and alumina, whose native gas is carbon. They had all the stone to blast with powder, but when they drew the pricker to enter the straw and apply the match, they felt the force of the carbon oozing from its native bed, and preventing the candle from reaching the match, by its deadly effects on combustion. In this manner the work was nearly brought to a stand still, and the principle to which we resorted to ventilate this shaft was as follows:—We had a regulating stopping near to the down-cast pit, with an aperture of 144 square inches, which was quite equivalent to the ordinary task which the air had to pei'form, tn rough the workings of this west and up-cast pit, and to air this staple, or shaft, 1 had boxes made, ten inches by fourteen, giving an area of 140 niches, which proved to be inadequate for the purpose, if no additional pressure could be applied to the box. This, as a matter of course, became W æ«110 °1 con.versa^on’ an^ a point of controversy among the officials. e list, obedient to orders, made everything as tight as possible with ime and clay this would not do; what was to be tried next? I got all ie stoppings made secure, and doors doubled, direct from the down-cast s la t ,an^ this drifting staple or shaft. I then broke down the regulating s oppmg, laid the w]10je atmospheric pressure on these boxes, and that produced the desired effect. We now saw no more carbon, nor expeilenced any lack of air during the whole of the time the men were engaged in their upward progress, xmtil they cut the coals, and then, after