Another instance of the same foolhardiness on the part of the miners is contained in the report issued in regard to an explosion which occurred at Denny, in Stirlingshire, on April 26th, 1895.  By this accident thirteen men lost their lives, and upon the bodies of eight of the number the following articles were found; upon Patrick Carr, tin matchbox half full of matches and a contrivance for opening lamps; John Comrie, split nail for opening lamps; Peter Conway, seven matches and split key for opening lamps; Patrick Dunton, split nail for opening lamps; John Herron, clay pipe and piece of tobacco; Henry M’Govern, tin matchbox half full of matches; Robert Mitchell, clay pipe and piece of tobacco; John Nicol, wooden pipe, piece of tobacco, one match, and box half full of matches.  The report stated that the immediate cause of the disaster was the ignition of fire-damp by naked light, the conditions of temperature being such as to exclude the possibility of spontaneous combustion.  Henry M’Govern had previously been convicted of having a pipe in the mine.  With regard to the question of sufficient ventilation it continued:—­“And we are therefore led, on a consideration of the whole evidence, to the conclusion that the accident cannot be attributed to the absence of ventilation, which the mine owners were bound under the Mines Regulation Act and the special rules to provide.”  The report concluded as follows:—­ “On the whole matter we have to report that, in our opinion, the explosion at Quarter Pit on April 26th, 1895, resulting in the loss of thirteen lives, was caused by the ignition of an accumulation or an outburst of gas coming in contact with a naked light, ’other than an open safety-lamp,’ which had been unlawfully kindled by one of the miners who were killed.  In our opinion, the intensity of the explosion was aggravated, and its area extended, by the ignition of coal-dust.”

We have mentioned that accidents have frequently occurred from the falling of “coal-pipes,” or, as they are also called, “bell-moulds.”  We must explain what is meant by this term.  They are simply what appear to be solid trunks of trees metamorphosed into coal.  If we go into a tropical forest we find that the woody fibre of dead trees almost invariably decays faster than the bark.  The result is that what may appear to be a sound tree is nothing but an empty cylinder of bark.  This appears to have been the case with many of the trees in coal-mines, where they are seen to pierce the strata, and around which the miners are excavating the coal.  As the coaly mass collected around the trunk when the coal was being formed, the interior was undergoing a process of decomposition, while the bark assumed the form of coal.  The hollow interior then became filled with the shale or sandstone which forms the roof of the coal, and its sole support when the coal is removed from around it, is the thin rind of carbonised bark.  When this falls to pieces, or loses its cohesion, the sandstone trunk falls of its own weight, often causing the death of the man that works beneath it.  Sir Charles Lyell mentions that in a colliery near Newcastle, no less than thirty sigillaria trees were standing in their natural position in an area of fifty yards square, the interior in each case being sandstone, which was surrounded by a bark of friable coal.