sits first or highest on the shute has no trouble in finding plenty to do, and, work as hard as he may, much of the unfit material must still escape him. The boy who sits below him on the shute is able to give the passing stream a closer inspection and more careful treatment, and, should there be one still below, he must have sharp eyes and skillful fingers to detect worthless pieces that have been left by his comrades. The boys often put their feet in the shute and dam the coal back for a moment to give them time to throw out the abundance of slate that they may see, but no matter how careful they are, nor how many hands the coal may pass through in the picking process, a certain percentage of slate and bone is sure to remain. The slate pickers are not all stationed in one room, though the picking-room usually holds the greater number of them. They are put at the shutes in any part of the breaker where their services may be useful or necessary. Indeed, there are pickers who sit at the refuse shutes to pick out the pieces of good coal which have been inadvertently thrown in by the other pickers. In some breakers the coal passes from the shute across a gently sloping platform, by the side of which the boy sits to pick out the waste. [Illustration: SCREEN-ROOM IN BREAKER, SHOWING SCREEN AND SHUTES.] But the time is undoubtedly coming when the occupation of the picker boy will be gone. The inventive genius of the age has already devised machinery which does its work faster, better, and with greater certainty than the most conscientious breaker boy could hope to do it. The great collieries are, one by one, adopting the new methods, and the army of breaker boys is gradually but surely decreasing.