27 AUGUST 1910, Page 29

First Steps in Coal Mining. By Alexander Forbes. (Mackie and

Son. 2s. 61.)—This book, we learn from the title-page, is "for Use in Supplementary and Continuation Classes," and it is the work of a "certificated colliery manager." Is it not some- thing for the /audator tenzporis acti to mark that such a book

should be produced ? indicates a very different state of things from that which existed less than a century ago, when women were employed in carrying heavy loads of coal up ladders, and children aged three years used to hold candles for their fathers to work by.