49 Farmers' children, 15-1/2 years old, measured, each, 59. " " 50 Colliers' children, 53. " " ---- Difference, 6. " "[34] Labor in coal mines is also stated, by a great number of most respectable witnesses, to produce a crippled gait, and a curvature of the spinal column, as well as a variety of disorders--among which may be enumerated, affections of the heart, rupture, asthma, rheumatism, and loss of appetite;--and this not merely in a few cases, but as an habitual, and almost inevitable result of their occupation. "Of the effect of employment in the coal mines of the East of Scotland in producing an early and irreparable deterioration of the physical condition, the Sub-commissioner thus reports:--'In a state of society, such as has been described, the condition of the children may be easily imagined, and its baneful influence on the health cannot well be exaggerated; and I am informed by very competent authorities, that six months' labor in the mines is sufficient to effect a very visible change in the physical condition of the children: and indeed it is scarcely possible to conceive of circumstances more calculated to sow the seeds of future disease, and, to borrow the language of the instructions, to prevent the organs from being developed, to enfeeble and disorder their functions, and to subject the whole system to injury, which cannot be repaired at any subsequent stage of life.'---(Frank's Report, s. 68: App. Pt. I, p. 396.) In the West of Scotland, Dr. Thomson, Ayr, says:--'A collier at fifty generally has the appearance of a man ten years older than he is.'"--(Evidence, No. 34; App. Pt. I, p. 371, l. 58.) If we turn to the testimony as to the moral, intellectual, and spiritual state of the great mass of the collier population, the picture is even darker and more appalling than that which has been drawn of their physical condition. The means of instruction to which they have access are scanty in the extreme;--their readiness to avail themselves of such means, if possible still scantier; and the real results of the instruction they do obtain, scantiest of all--as the following extracts will show:-- "As an example of the mental culture of the collier children in the neighborhood of Halifax, the Sub-commissioner states, that an examination of 219 children and young persons at the bottom of one of the coal-pits, he found only 31 that could read an easy book, not more than 15 that could write their names, these latter having received instruction at some day-school before they commenced colliery labor, and that the whole of the remaining number were incapable of connecting two syllables together."--(Scriven, Report, Mines: App. Pt. II, 73, s. 91.)