In reviewing the disastrous accidents to which mines must remain liable notwithstanding every care taken to prevent them,accidents frequently productive of great danger to the men employed and too often of deplorable loss of life, as well as involving great damage to property and not unfrequently heavy loss consequent on the stoppage of s mine during the period required for restoring it to wgrking order,-there are two circumstances that especially present themselves to the attention, and appear to call for the consideration, of mechanical engineers. First-The extent of the injury done, and of the danger incurred, is greatly aggravated by the insdciency of the mechanical means available for grappling with the contingency : as for instance in the case of the sudden bursting in of a dood of water from old workings. I n such an event the ordinary appliances for raising water are usually insufficient. The difficulty is a mechanical one, namely, how to bring t o bear within a short time a sufficient mechanical power to raise in hours a quantity of water that. would otherwise take days, when the question of life or death may be determined by the saving of a single day. I t is important to bear in mind that time is the main consideration, and that every day saved in getting a mine to work again after having been stopped by an inundation generally represents a considerable sum of money which would otherwise be lost. Second-On most occasions of mine accident many special mechanical appliances are schemed and brought into use, and frequently very useful and effective apparatus is improvised on the MECHANICAL APPLIABOES FOB MINE ACUIDENTS. NOV. 1877. many weeks, although as much apparatus as possible was borrowed from neighbours. At Highbridge Colliery, Pelsall, March 30th, 1871, three lives were lost because an inundation could not be subdued, so much sand coming with the water that pumps of ordinary construction were soon rendered useless. At Pelsal2 Hall, Walsall, November 14th, 1872, nineteen men died from choke-damp before an inundation could be sficiently subdued to rescue them, dthough the existing pumping plant was used with extraordinary effect. At Kmmure Pit, Glasgow, February 7th, 1873, two men were supposed to have lived fourteen days in a high level after an inundation. The accident at Tynewydd Colliery in the Rhondda Valley, Glamorganshire, on 11th April of the present year (1877), whereby five men lost their lives and nine others were only rescued after an imprisonment of nine days, will be fresh in the minds of the members. There have also been numerous cases of fire, where ready means of extinguishing or controlling sere not at hand, or where the quick method of flooding could not be resorted to for savipg the property, owing to the inability to get the water out again except at too great a, cost, as for example the