Everywhere in Wigan one may meet with the widows and orphans of men who have been killed in the mines; and there are no few men more or less disabled by colliery accidents, and, therefore, dependent either upon the kindness of their employers, or upon the labour of their families in the cotton factories.

The city is surrounded by colliery communities which are so close together and so near the city proper that they really form part of the town.

The attack began at dawn with the capture of 2,000 yards of German positions on the outskirts of the shell-torn mining center, the Canadians driving their lines closer about the heart of the city and gaining possession of many railway embankments and colliery sidings in the northwest and southwest suburbs which had been strongly fortified for defense with a series of shell-hole nests of machine guns.

An advance upon two German colliery positions adjoining the Grassier to the northwest, earlier in the night, also involved stiff hand-to-hand fighting.

The hedges, blackened with smuts from the colliery on the other side of the slope, were dripping also with raindrops.

In the background were the tall chimneys of several factories; on the left, a colliery shaft raised its smoke-blackened finger to the lowering clouds.

It is of a kind often met with in ancient English towns; you can see its brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London; but amid its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique and impressive.

"The Harton Colliery Experiment: I had long wished to repeat the experiment which I had attempted unsuccessfully in 1826 and 1828, of determining by pendulum-vibrations the measure of gravity at the bottom of a mine.

Residing near Keswick this summer, and having the matter in my mind, I availed myself of an introduction from Dr Leitch to some gentlemen at South Shields, for inspection of the Harton Colliery.

"With regard to the Pendulum Experiments in the Harton Colliery, after mentioning that personal assistance had been sought and obtained from the Observatories of Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, and Red Hill, the Report states that "The experiments appear to have been in every point successful, shewing beyond doubt that gravity is increased at the depth of 1260 feet by 1/10000th part.

Regarding the distribution of the printed observations: There is no extensive wish for separate magnetic observations, but general magnetic results are in great demand, especially for mining operations, and to meet this a map of magnetic declination is furnished in the newspaper called the 'Colliery Guardian.

This reduction will not affect the numbers to be entered, as a larger number of cadets will be accommodated at Dartmouth Colliery.

The places from whence all coal is brought are called coal mines; the men who dig it out of the ground, and the ships that carry it over the sea, are called colliers, and the place where the coals are got is called a colliery.

Hartley Colliery, about half a mile away, has a sad interest as being the scene of the terrible accident in 1862, when a number of men and boys were imprisoned in the workings owing to the blocking up of the only shaft by a mass of débris, caused by the fall of an iron beam belonging to the pumping engine at the pit-head.

The river Wansbeck not far north of the mouth of the Blyth, in the latter part of its course flows through a district begrimed by all the necessary accompaniments of the traffic in "black diamonds," and reaches the sea between the colliery villages of Cambois and North Seaton.

" Tinmouth Priory had a colliery at Elwick, which in 1330 was let at the yearly rent of five pounds; in 1530 it was let for twenty pounds a year, on condition that not more than twenty chaldron should be drawn in a day; and eight years after, at fifty pounds a year, without restriction on the quantity to be wrought.

"Dear Lady,We, the surviving widows and mothers of some of the men and boys who lost their lives by the explosion which occurred in the Oaks Colliery, near Barnsley, in December 1866, desire to tell your Majesty how stunned we all feel by the cruel and unexpected blow which has taken 'Prince Eddie' from his dear Grandmother, his loving parents, his beloved intended, and an admiring nation.

Fine dust in a flour mill is so combustible as to be explosive and dangerous, and Mr. Galloway has shown that many colliery explosions are due not to the presence of gas so much as the presence of fine coal-dust suspended in the air.

I've known worse days, tak' them all in all, than those in Eddlewood Colliery.

He was very sensitive, and he never came back to the Eddlewood Colliery; the very next day he found a job in another pit.

And yet out of the brightest and broadest fields of wheat, barley and oats, towered up the colliery chimneys in every direction, like good-natured and swarthy giants smoking their pipes complacently and "with comfortable breasts" in view of the goodly scene.

The church, which is almost screened from observation by the workings of a colliery, is a small, modern building, rather foreign in appearance.

Coleford (4 m. S. from Radstock) is an unattractive colliery village, with a modern church (1831).

Dunkerton, a small colliery village 2-1/2 m. N. from Wellow (S. & D.), lying in a deep valley.

" "Talking of that, Ben, how was it that you got rid of that troublesome overseer in the Welsh colliery?" Ben started, and looked aghast for a moment, but soon recovered himself and told his tale of blood with a strange mixture of satisfaction and awe, washing his hands in the air nervously all the time.