Boring through hard stone is necessarily a very tedious work, but as it proceeds it awakens not only in those who are directly interested in its success, but in every intelligent witness, all the stirring emotions of a game of chance. ‘Of all branches of business,’ says Williams, a thoroughly devoted miner—‘of all the experiments that a man of sensibility can be engaged in, or attend to, there is, perhaps, none so amusing, so engaging, and delightful as a successful trial upon the vestigia, or appearances, of a seam of coal, or other mineral discoveries. When you are attending the people who are digging down or forward upon the vestige of the coal, and the indications are increasing and still growing better under your eye, the spirit of curiosity and attention is awakened, and all the powers of expectation are elevated in pleasing hopes of success. And when your wishes are at length actually fulfilled—when you have discovered a good coal of sufficient thickness, and all circumstances are favourable, the heart then triumphs with solid and satisfactory joy.' In a mining country like England, where the spirit of enterprise is continually on the look-out for new sources of profit, it may naturally be supposed that searches for coal or metallic ore must be frequently undertaken. Thus in all our mining districts there are professional master-borers, who engage for a fixed price to drill the hardest rock to any depth that may be required.[35] Their chief implements are boring- rods, made of the best and most tenacious Swedish iron; chisels fitted with screws, tipped with good steel, with a face of two and a half to three and a quarter inches, and generally eighteen inches in length; and a wimble, which is a hollow iron instrument like an auger, whose cavity is from six to ten inches in length, with an opening up at one side, with partial overlap, the better to receive and hold the chopped strata. Footnote 35: In the North of England the prices of boring in the ordinary strata of that coal-field are as follows:— _s._ _d._ First five fathoms 5 6 per fathom. Second five ” 11 0 ” Third five ” 16 6 ” Fourth five ” 22 0 ” and so increasing 5_s._ 6_d._ per fathom on each succeeding depth of five fathoms. In boring through very hard strata the prices are from 80 to 100 per cent. higher.