SYSTEMS FOR WORKING COAL MINES.

We have devoted but small space to this subject; not that we are insensible of its extreme importance, but because it was somewhat out of the scope we had assigned to the present volume, and also because this knowledge may be separately obtained through the medium of numerous publications by experienced persons; conveying that precise description of information, for the benefit of those who are practically engaged in this service, or are interested in this description of property. It would be invidious, perhaps, to make mention of some of these, without including all.

The Parliamentary Reports embody a great amount of practical information on the methods employed in excavating coal mines. The pages of the Mining Journal, during many years, have been rich in valuable details of the same kind: and among the most recent of its articles is one from Mr. Dunn, "on the various systems practised in the conducting of coal mines, and of the methods employed in counteracting the effects of inflammable air."* This article has elicited criticism and additional facts from others, equally practical, through the same useful channel. This subject is also treated on at some length, in Dr. Ure's Dictionary of Mines, &c. The coal measures of Anzin in the coal basin of Valenciennes, as at Mons, in Belgium, are covered by an enormous thickness of horizontal cretaceous and tertiary strata, through which it is necessary to penetrate. These overlying beds are called by the French miners "morts-terrains," or dead lands, and being highly charged with springs of water, require great skill and enormous expense in sinking the shafts through, until they reach the inclined coal seams, at the depth of from two hundred and twenty to eight hundred feet beneath the surface.

The annexed figure affords a remarkably instructive view of these circumstances, both in a mining and geological sense; showing the revêtement or impervious lining of the shaft, through the "dead formations;" the mode of ascent and descent provided for the miners, and the position of the ventilating fire, near the bottom of the vertical shaft.

Mining Journal, March 21 and 28, 1846. The reader will derive much interesting information, respecting coal mining operations, from the lectures of Professor Anstead, as reported in the London Mining Journal, 1847-8.

In order to show more distinctly the position and arrangement for the ventilating fires at the bottom of the shafts, we introduce the following enlarged figure of those employed in the mines of Anzin.

Coal Measures.

"Morts-terrains" or dead lands.

Diagram showing the arrangement of a ventilating furnace "foyer d'aerage."

It is observed by M. Burat, that, as a general fact, applicable to all the methods of exploitation, it is necessary to be watchful that the pillars be not suffered to remain isolated, and for a long time exposed to the action of the air, before pulling them down. Coal alters in the mines almost as much as at the surface; the pyrites, contained therein, decompose, and the hydroxide of iron, which is the result, gives to the coal a rusty stain which depreciates its value. Finally, the schists disintegrate, effloresce, and the selection of the coal becomes much more difficult. It is necessary, therefore, to proportion the excavation, by preparatory works, to the extraction which may be required during the year.

Coal is, without contradiction, among the useful minerals, the one whose exploitation presents the greatest difficulties. In fact, it requires to be extracted in very large masses; its primitive value, scarcely more considerable than the stones of the mines, is, nevertheless, sufficiently important that we should not abandon the smallest possible amount of it. Left in the old workings, it is lost forever; besides, the interior sources of water and of deleterious gases incroach sometimes upon the immense subterranean surfaces that are exposed. It needs all the resources of science and industry to render possible the working of certain basins, which would have remained in abandonment without the modern means of safety and ventilation and the progress of the steam engine.

Obstructions generally develope themselves in connection with the surfaces placed under investigation. The engineer can then unfold, progressively, his means of action in such a manner as to remain always master of the exploitation. But it is the sudden accidents which defy all human prudence, which endanger the safety of the miners, and which, in a few hours, destroy the fruits of long labour and of powerful capital. The most terrible of these accidents arise from the collection of water and of gas, which in nearly all of these

basins, are found accumulated in ancient workings, of which tradition has scarcely preserved the remembrance. When a cutting approaches the vicinity of one of these accumulations, a blow of the pick or a blast of the mine suffices to put the works in communication with the danger; and when it manifests itself, there is neither time to fly nor to resist it.

To avoid these sad rencounters, the miners are preceded in the drifts where danger is to be feared, by horizontal borings, sondages, some of them straight, others divergent. These soundings, to furnish sufficient security, ought to be about thirty feet around; if one of them reach a chasm, all the work of excavation ought to cease as soon as it is practicable to ascertain its nature.*

VENTILATION OF COAL MINES.

On the causes which vitiate the air in mines.-"The means of maintaining in the mines an atmosphere constantly respirable, and of preserving the workmen from the accidents which result from deleterious gases, constitutes one of the capital parts of the art of working, exploiter.

The causes which most frequently vitiate the air, are these: the respiration of the workmen; the combustion of the lamps; the explosions of powder; the spontaneous decomposition of certain mineral substances, such as the sulphurets which change into sulphates; the coal which heats and burns spontaneously; the corruption of the wood; the striking of the tools against rocks which contain ores of arsenic or mercury; in addition to which is the natural disengagement of deleterious gases which penetrate the rocks, or are accumulated in the crevices and natural cavities, and sometimes in old workings. The gas thus produced or disengaged disposes itself in the drifts or galleries according to the order of density, as follows:

Carbonated hydrogen, fire-damp, or inflammable gas,
Azote or nitrogen gas,.

Atmospheric air,

Sulphuretted hydrogen,

Carbonic acid, or choke-damp,

Arsenical and mercurial vapours.

The general precautions employed to get rid of these gases as soon as they are formed, in creating currents sufficiently active to effect their diffusion with the atmospheric air, and to draw the mixture out of the works before it is prejudicial, constitute the art of ventilation -aérage. But these general means do not always suffice, and it is necessary to add special means to avoid, or at least to restrain the sudden disengagements, until the common methods shall have restored

Burat Géologie appliquée, p. 416.

the equilibrium. It is necessary, then, to be able to recognize the presence of each of these gases, in order to destroy them in time, and even, if possible, to diminish the causes of their production.

When the working of a mine, pit or gallery is commenced, if no particular phenomenon facilitate the renewal of air, the respiration alone of the workmen and the combustion of their lamps, are not slow to modify it sensibly. In fact, a workman respires an average of 800 litres = 210 gallons of air per hour, from which he absorbs, in part, oxygen, and substitutes for this oxygen, in the same space of time, 24 to 25 litres, = 63 gallons of carbonic acid; his lamp, operating nearly with the same intensity as his respiration produces as much carbonic acid, and augments besides the proportion of unconnected azote.

The carbonic acid, or choke-damp, which is thus the most immediate and most general product of the workings in the mine, is recognized by its weight; it always occupies the lowest parts of the excavations; its intermixture with air manifests itself by the difficulty of combustion in the lamps, whose flame diminishes in brilliancy in proportion as the acid increases, and ends by extinction, when the mixture attains to one-tenth.

Upon the miners, the carbonic acid manifests itself by an oppression which overwhelms them; nevertheless, temperament and habit will greatly vary the proportions of the mixture which some men are able to breathe. Certain miners can yet work when the lights have ceased to burn; there are even some whose acquired habit is such that they pass through, we are assured, galleries where there is more than twenty per cent. of carbonic acid. Nevertheless, we should watch, on pain of the greatest dangers, that the lamps can everywhere burn with facility, and that the proportions never exceed five per cent.; for this gas, which the French miners commonly call mofette, has the greatest tendency to isolate after generation, and will then cause an instantaneous asphyxia.

A single example will demonstrate this energetic action. The workmen of the Creuzot mine descended one morning, the one following the other, in rotation, into a shaft below, in which carbonic acid had accumulated during the night. Arrived at the level of the "bain," at a few yards from the bottom of the pit, the first fell, struck with asphyxia, without having time to utter a cry; the second followed immediately; the third saw his comrades prostrated on the ground, almost within reach of his arm; he stooped to seize them, and fell himself; another quickly shared the same fate, in his desire to save the others, and the catastrophe would not have been arrested had not the fifth been an experienced master miner, who obliged those who followed him to reascend.

These accidents are often to be dreaded in coal mines, where spontaneous disengagements are capable of producing in a little time large quantities of carbonic acid. In this case, it is necessary to have within reach ammonia, caustic potash, or lime, of which a solution must rapidly be made, to be thrown into the invaded workings, either