The miner’s needle is an iron rod about five and one half feet in length, with a handle at one end. It is about five eighths of an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapers to a point at the other end. When the cartridge has been pushed in to the extreme end of the bore hole, the needle is inserted also, the point of it piercing the outer end of the cartridge. The needle is then allowed to rest on the bottom or at the side of the drill hole while the miner gathers fine dirt from the floor of the mine, dampens it slightly if it is dry, and pushes it into the hole alongside. This dirt is then forced in against the cartridge with the head of the drill. More dirt is put in and driven home, and still more, until, by the time the hole is filled to its outer extremity, the packing is hard and firm. This process is called tamping. It can now be seen that the semicircular notch on the rim of the blunt end of the drill is for the purpose of allowing the drill to slip along over the needle, which still retains its position, and at the same time to fill the diameter of the hole. The tamping being finished the miner takes hold of the needle by the handle, turns it once or twice gently in its bed, and then slowly withdraws it. A round, smooth channel is thus left from the outside directly in to the powder of the cartridge, and into this channel the squib is inserted. The squib is simply an elongated fire-cracker. It has about the diameter of a rye straw, is about four inches in length, and its covering projects an inch or two at one end and is twisted up for a fuse. The covering of the squib may indeed be of straw, sometimes it is of hempen material, but more often, in these days, it is made of paper. It is filled with powder and is then dipped into a resinous mixture to make it water-proof, to coat over the open end so that the powder shall not run out, and to make the wick at the other end mildly inflammable. If the bore hole should be very wet an iron or copper tube, through which the needle is run, is laid to the cartridge before the hole is tamped, and when the needle is withdrawn the squib is inserted into the mouth of the tube. If inflammable gases are exuding from the coal through the bore hole, or if for any other reason it is feared that the cartridge will be exploded too quickly, a short piece of cotton wick, dipped in oil, is attached to the fuse of the squib to lengthen it, and this extra section of fuse is allowed to hang down from the mouth of the bore hole against the face of coal.