MANY mines are worked with profit now-a-days by reason of improved methods and apparatus, that would have caused a loss to those operating them a generation ago. The following notes on cheap light water pipes are intended to make these vessels better known to those who may find them useful. It is hardly necessary to point out the advantage of pipes generally over open ditches ; danger from leakage and unauthorised tapping is minimised ; crayfish cannot penetrate them ; animals cannot tread in the sides while trying to drink ; evaporation is nil ; vegetation does not suck up the moisture ; being buried underground, the pipes are to a great extent protected from falling trees and traffic ; water can be carried across gullies on the ground, or suspended on wire ropes, without the employment of trestles, so liable to destruction by bush fire or flood ; careful levelling, often necessitating a roundabout course, is not required; the power is conserved, and can in many instances be utilized in the place of steam power ; the water is kept free from leaves and surface rubbish ; the water flows with less friction along the smooth pipes than in open channels, while the Up-keep is next to nothing. The lives of mines at the present are not so long as formerly, owing to the greater rate at which they are 'worked ; this permits us to use certain things that would be considered make-shifts under old conditions. With the case in point the freight alone on cast iron pipes will sometimes cost more than a complete installation of Zollner's patent pipes of the same capacity, a matter of no little moment to small companies with limited capital. Cast iron pipes, though advisable and necessary in some instances, are clumsy things to handle, are liable to crack if dropped, and require a quantity of lead for their joints.