The President (Mr. T. E. Forster) said that the old wooden pumps found in Rainton colliery, which had been presented to the Institute by The Most Noble the Marquess of Londonderry, were now on view in the Library. From the form of the pumps he supposed that they might be about 200 years old, as he believed that cast-iron pumps only came into use in the eighteenth century.

Mr. W. V. Corbett (Chilton Moor) wrote that the pumps were found at the bottom of an old shaft about 600 feet to the south east of the Adventure pit. There was no record of the shaft having been worked, and it had been filled up to the top, but had recently been re-opened for the purpose of a ventilating shaft. The work of boring the timber of which the pumps were made had been done most carefully, probably with tools far inferior to those in use at the present day.

Prof. Henry Louis (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) remarked that wooden pumps were largely in use in Scandinavia at the present time down to a depth of 600 or 900 feet, the sets being 30 to 36 feet deep ; they were usually worked by water power transmitted by suspended wooden connecting rods.

A vote of thanks to the Most Noble the Marquess of Londonderry for his gift was unanimously passed.