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When I visited No. 3 district on the 14th inst.,* with Professor Redmayne and Messrs. Atkinson, Pope, Herbert Smith and others, we were unable to make any tests for the presence of firedamp as we were only provided with portable electric lamps. But when I stood up on the fallen top-coal in the Reids' place and again on pieces of fallen roof in the goaf near Mcquilliam's pillar I at once perceived the aromatic odour peculiar to the firedamp of this mine, and immediately felt the giddiness and difficulty in breathing experienced in firedamp containing less than, say, 50 per cent. of air. Mr. Atkinson filled two bottles with this gas at the time by pouring water out of them, re-corking them, carrying them to the surface, and testing their contents, which burned with the lambent blue flame of nearly pure firedamp.

A hole with an area of about six square feet, or say one-sixth of the area of the original passage, had been cut through the brick stopping near this point for the purpose of facilitating and improving the ventilation of this part of the mine and of No. 3 district generally. The quantity of air passing through it on the 19th inst., as measured by Mr. Blair, was about 600 cubic feet per minute. Notwithstanding this, and the further fact that no workings had been carried on in the mine since the 11th of May, a period of 187 days, explosive gas, and above it gas containing too little air to render it explosive, was standing in the Reids' place and in the goaf near macquilliam's pillar on the 14th inst., although it is a well known fact that the quantity of gas produced in any mine is, to a large extent, proportional to the output of coal being obtained from it at the moment the observation is being made. It has further been proved by exact analyses that even after the lapse of one day (Saturday to Monday) a distinct falling off is observable, and I have myself found the return airways of even the most fiery mines to be practically free after the workings had been suspended for a few months.

With this knowledge and experience before me, and independently of the evidence of the workmen as to the occasional presence of firedamp in this part of the mine, I am satisfied that its condition on the night of the 11th of May was no better, however much worse it may have been, than when I saw it.

All speculations as to whether the ignition of the gas which caused the explosion occurred through the breakage of the glass of a lamp held, or hung up, in explosive gas until it became hot, or through a defective lamp carried unwittingly into it in Macquilliam's place or at the Dilly, or by reason of a fall of roof driving out gas on to a defective or injured lamp in either of these two places, or even in the place to which the Reids had betaken themselves, are for practical purposes irrelevant to the point at issue, because the presence of lamps at the point at which men are at work is indispensable and cannot be avoided, whereas the presence of gas at, or near, the same points is a constantly threatening source of danger, which should not be tolerated under any conceivable circumstances.

The only uses of safety lamps are to enable the men appointed for the purpose to examine the workings with the object of ascertaining whether any part of them contains explosive gas, and to guard against the possibility of men entering a part of the mine containing gas whose presence had not been previously known or suspected.

It is no part of their functions to enable men to work in, or near, known accumulations of gas such as those which occupied the goaves in No. 3 district, although both the management and workmen of this mine appear to have been either entirely ignorant of, or indifferent to the fact.

It should be regarded as an axiomatic principle, capable of no relaxation, that gas must be removed from every part of a mine in, or near, which workmen are to be employed. It is, therefore, obvious that if management had been alive to their own and their workmen's best interests, they would either have abandoned pillar working under the conditions which obtained in this part of the mine, or have arranged the workings in such a way that gas could not by any possibility have remained in the goaves. For instance, if a few openings had been made up the slope of the 9-fathom fault into the higher workings beyond it the south goaf would have ventilated itself, that is to say, the ascensional force of the firedamp would have carried it away as fast as it was produced without the aid of any mechanical means, and have drawn fresh air up behind it in which the men could have worked anywhere along the lower edge or at the sides of the goaf without the slightest danger. If, for one reason or another, this course was considered to be inexpedient, another equally effective one could have been adopted ; but the main point to be observed and acted upon is that pillar working cannot be safely carried on in this mine in the manner, and under the conditions, that prevailed in No. 3 district. The explosion itself is the best proof of the risk incurred.

It has been suggested by Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Blair that the explosion originated near the point at which the Reids' bodies were found, because objects were found to have been blown northwards, southwards, and westwards from that neighbourhood. In my opinion, no local explosion originating at that point, and having plenty of room to spread in other directions, could possibly have smashed four mine wagons against the face at a distance of only 80 or 100 yards due west from it, and broken them into an almost unrecognisable mass of iron skeletons stripped of their wood-work.

I submit as the true explanation of both phenomena, that while the explosion was still spreading far and wide amongst the pillars in the heart of the district, creating increasing pressure, and advancing with the velocity of a hurricane in every direction, its south-eastern margin swept into this part of the mine, which constitutes a cul-de-sac, in the form of a highly condensed air-wave closely pursued by flame ; that when this air-wave had reached and been arrested in this cul-de-sac the high pressure, and correspondingly high temperature due to its advent, lingered there for an appreciable interval of time, causing the coal dust to burn fiercely and evolve intense heat ; that while this combination was still in process the great mass of heated air and steam which occupied the central workings was already cooling and forming a vacuum towards which the still highly compressed and heated air from this and other similar points around the outskirts of the district recoiled with the same force as the original air-wave carrying objects in the opposite direction.

After a great explosion in any mine in which several parts of the workings present similar features, similar phenomena are observed to have occurred in each, such as the transportation of movable objects in opposite directions, deposits of thick crusts of coked coal dust, timber and coal that have actually been set on fire, and sometimes in the inner recesses of culs-de-sac, pendants of coked coal dust like small stalactites hanging from the roof. These evidences of contrary forces and very high temperature, respectively, are often found as far removed from each other as the opposite extremities of the workings.

Mr. Atkinson went a step further, although Mr. Blair refused in this instance to follow him, in propounding the hypothesis that a member of the Reids' party who had only one eye had damaged a lamp standing on his blind side with a blow of his pick, and that gas had been simultaneously driven out of the goaf by a fall of roof and became ignited at the unprotected flame. I will do him the justice to assume that he had not carefully, if at all, considered the improbability of the two events having occurred say within the same five minutes.

Let us suppose, for instance, that firedamp is driven out of the goaf onto the lamps of workmen as far away from it as the Reids were, say, once a year: then the probability of that event happening during any given period of five minutes throughout the year is as 1 to, say, 100,00. Again, if this miner with one eye was in the habit of breaking a lamp in the manner imagined, say again once a year, then the chances of his doing so during any given period of five minutes is again, say, 1 in 100,00. The probability of these two events within the same period of five minutes in any given year is therefore as many millions to one.

It has been stated here by five of the colliers who were clearing a fall at some distance from their working place, namely, the top of the Dilly (a small auxiliary inclined plane), and left the mine an hour or two before the explosion, that an assistant deputy warned them to be careful if they intended to return to their working place as there was some "dirt" (firedamp) in it. The assistant deputy said he could not remember the conversation.

The following shift of men went to work at the top of the Dilly and their bodies were found close to it.

If the account of what was said at the interview is true, and the colliers had, perhaps more reason to remember it than the man who warned them, then the men of the succeeding shift began to work in close proximity to, if not actually in, explosive gas. If they placed, or hung, their lamps below the explosive gas and began to disturb its under surface by their movements, they would soon bring it down to the level of their lamps, and thereafter, the cracking of a glass through heat in such a manner as to produce an open fissure would supply the only link required to produce the explosion.

A lamp with a badly cracked glass but otherwise uninjured was found beside the body of one of these men by Mr. Herbert Smith. It may, or may not, the source of inflammation ; but, on the whole, I think it much more likely that the explosion originated at this point than at the point where the Reids were at work, as the former was close to, if not actually under, the accumulation of gas in the goaf, whereas the latter was about a hundred yards distant from it.

In conclusion I repeat that I consider it a matter of indifference as to how and where the explosion began. So far as I can see, nothing can be said in palliation of the state of affairs shown to have existed before the explosion ; the safety of the men, which must be the paramount consideration in all mining operations, imperatively demands the absence of explosive gas from the neighbourhood in which they are at work ; and a return to conditions the same as or similar to, those which formerly in this mine must, by some means or other, be made absolutely impossible in the future.

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* This refers to November. R.A.S.R.