In the year 1867, 1,190 persons perished in our 3,192 collieries, which employ a total of 333,116 workmen. Of these, 286 were killed by explosions; 449 by falls of rock; 211 by other subterranean causes; 156 in the shafts; and 88 above ground. In the same year, 293 lives were lost in the Prussian collieries, where 102,773 workmen find employment. Of these, 39 perished by fire-damp; 106 by fall of roof; 65 in shafts; 74 by casualties under ground; and 9 by casualties above ground. These melancholy lists may give us some idea of the number of serious but non- fatal accidents which are not mentioned in the official accounts. Every visitor to a coal-mine will meet with many pit lads who have been ‘lamed’ (or injured) several times in a few years, and who reckon events by the mournful chronology of their various ‘lamings.’ Collieries, as will be seen in the sequel, are indeed peculiarly liable to frightful accidents; yet the number of lives lost in the inspected ironstone mines of Great Britain, in 1866, amounted to 81. Extending our view to the mines of Austria and Russia, of France and Belgium, of Mexico and Peru, &c., &c., where the same dangers cause, no doubt, an equal amount of death or suffering, we may justly conclude that not a day, probably not an hour, passes that does not doom more than one miner to an untimely grave or to permanent mutilation. But if mining is attended with a lamentable amount of individual suffering, the benefits derived from it by mankind in general are so important that the whole fabric of modern civilisation may be said to rest upon its basis. Coal and the useful metals rule the world. Wherever they occur in large masses they establish the prosperity of a people on the surest foundations; and England is in a great measure indebted for her high station among the nations of the earth to the treasures hidden beneath her soil. A large mine displays unquestionably some of the most interesting scenes of human activity. The restless industry pervading its subterranean caves and galleries impresses the visitor with feelings of wonder akin to those which he experiences when he first sets foot on a man-of-war; and if he feels giddy on seeing the sailor climb the loftiest masts, the sight of the yawning abyss into which the miner undauntedly descends seems terrible to his unaccustomed eye; and as he penetrates further and further into the recesses of this unknown world, his sensations are not rendered more agreeable.