Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/133

 flannel shirt and drawers, and a pair of coarse linen trowsers, a low round-crowned hat, and a pair of shoes. At the end of the period of labour, on the workman's return to the surface, some part of the dress is generally changed, the hands and face washed of their ochry covering, and a coat and waistcoat put on. Miners frequently live several miles distant from the mine in which they work, and invariably return home on leaving it. While at work, miners in general perspire very freely, owing to the very high temperature of the stagnant air in the inner ends of the galleries.

Sometimes the galleries wherein the men are working are quite dry and dusty; much more frequently the bottom is covered with a greater or less portion of water, produced by the imperceptible transpiration of the vein or condensation of the humid air; and, occasionally, in lodes of a very loose texture and in a watery country, the whole roof of the gallery is perceptibly dripping. In all the lower galleries of Huel Vor tin mine, which is situated in killas, I found the water pouring from the roofs like rain, and in some places rushing in streams through the loose and druzy lode. In all these galleries the average temperature of the water, at a depth of 800 feet, was about 67°.

The miners whom I saw at work here, had been drenched in this incessant shower six hours every day, for many preceding months.

Miners never carry any food with them into the mines, and I never observed any other kind of drink than water. They never sleep under-ground, nor