CUNICULUS, in mining, a term used by authors in distinction from poteus, 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 potei are the perpendicular cuts or descents. The miners in Germany call these by the name stollen, and schachts; the first word expressing the horizontal, and the second the perpendicular cuts.