CUNICULUS, in mining, a term used by authors in distinction from puteus, to express the several sorts of passages and cuts in these subterranean works. The cuniculi are those direct passages in mines where they walk on horizontally; but the putei are the perpendicular cuts or descents. The miners in Germany call these by the name stollen, and schacht; the first word
expressing the horizontal, and the second the perpendicular cuts.