Excerpt from A Text-Book of Coal-Mining: For the Use of Colliery Managers and OthersIN the preparation of this volume my aim has been to supply a text-book of moderate dimensions, giving all the information with which the student and the practical miner should be familiar. In order, however, to economise space, I have had to omit reference to many appliances which have become obsolete from their antiquity, or by reason of their failure in practice.Although it is impossible within the limits of the book to furnish exhaustive descriptions on all points, yet the details of general colliery work have been fully described, on the ground that collieries are more often made remunerative by perfection in small matters, than by bold strokes of engineering. All modern collieries are practically identical so far as general machinery and arrangements are concerned, nevertheless, it frequently happens, in particular localities, that the adoption of a combination of small improvements any one of which viewed separately may be of apparently little value, turns an unprofitable concern into a paying one.At the end of each chapter will be found a carefully selected list of Memoirs in which fuller information can be sought. This will, it is hoped, prove a novel and useful feature in a treatise on coal-mining, for, scattered through the pages of the Transactions of the Mining Institutes, numerous valuable papers exist, but, owing to the lack of general indexes, they are unfortunately not consulted so much as they deserve to be.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.