“By the feeble light of the miner’s lamp we enter one of these aisles.  The whole thickness of the coal seam is exposed along the walls.

“Here and there a white shell projects, showing us that the products of the sea are suspended over our heads.

“Then a very different sight will greet our eyes.  The rocky ceiling will be ornamented everywhere with the most delicate tracery, faultless representations of the delicate fronds of ferns.

“We remove a scale from the rock, and behind is still another picture.  The whole mass of the shaly roof is a portfolio of inimitable sketches.  The sharpest outlines and the minutest serratures are clearly traced.  Buds, woody stems, cones, fruits, grasses, rushes, club mosses, all are by turns pictured on the dusky ceiling.”

In another portion of his book, Professor Winchell speaks of very curious things that have been found in many instances by miners in the heart of a coal mine.

These are the trunks of trees, which are found standing upright as though still growing.

Mr. Winchell says: 

“These tree-trunks are from one to five feet in diameter, and are sometimes sixty or seventy feet in height.

“In many instances they have been found standing erect, and have evidently been buried by accumulations of mud and sand.

“In the excavation of a bed of coal these petrified trees are not unfrequently cut off below, when the slight taper of the trunk permits them to slide down into the mine.

“These ‘coal pipes’ are much dreaded by English miners, for almost every year they are the cause of fatal accidents.”

* * * * *

The tailors of New York are striking for better wages and shorter hours.  They want laws to protect them, for they complain that their wages are often left unpaid.

Several of the Unions in neighboring cities have joined the New Yorkers, and it is expected that the strike will be a long one.

This strike is peculiar in one sense, for, while the workmen are really fighting the contractors, these same contractors are heartily in sympathy with them, and hope that they will win.

The contractors are the people who make the garments for the large wholesale houses, and they declare that the low prices the wholesale houses pay for the clothes is the cause of all the trouble.

Formerly the contractor was able to get $1.25 for making a coat, now the manufacturers will only pay 75 cents.

As the manufacturers’ prices went down, the contractors had less money to pay their hands with, and they were obliged in turn to reduce the wages of the workers.

When the wages were as low as the contractors dared make them, they increased the day’s task, and forced the workers to make more coats in their day’s work.

For the first time in six years all the branches of the tailors’ trade have joined in the strike.