or Lode, in mining, a word used especially in the tin-mines, for any regular vein or course, whether metallic or not; but most commonly load means a metallic vein.

It is to be observed, that mines in general are veins or cavities within the earth, whose sides receding from or approaching to each other, make them of unequal breadths in different places, sometimes forming large spaces, which are called boles; these holes are filled like the rest with substances, which, whether metallic, or of any other nature, are called loads. When the substances forming these loads are reducible to metal, the loads are by the English miners said to be alive, otherwise they are termed dead loads.

In Cornwall and Devonshire the loads all hold their course from eastward to westward, tho' in other parts of England they frequently run from north to south. The miners report, that the sides of the load never bear in a perpendicular, but always overhang either to the north or south above. The mines seem to have been so many channels through which the waters pass within the earth; and like rivers they have their small branches opening into them in all directions: these are by the miners termed the feeders of the load. Most mines have streams of water running through them; and when they are found dry, it seems owing to the water having changed its course, which it seems sometimes to have been compelled to by the load's having filled up the course, and sometimes to have fallen into other more easy channels.

The load is frequently intercepted by the crossing of a vein of earth or stone, or some other metallic substance; in which case it generally happens, that one part of the load is moved to a considerable distance on one side. This transient load is, by the miners, termed a floothing; and the part of the load which is moved, is by them said to be heaved. This fracture or heave of a load, according to Mr Price, is produced by a subsidence of the strata from their primary positions, which he supposes to have been horizontal or parallel to the surface of the earth, and therefore should more properly be called a depression than a heave. This heaving of the load would be an inexpensible loss to the miner, did not experience teach him, that as the loads always run on the sides of the hills, so the part heaved is always moved toward the descent of the hill; so that the miner, working toward the ascent of the hill, and meeting a floothing, considers himself as working in the heaved part; therefore, cutting through the floothing, he works upon its back up the ascent of the hill, till he recovers the load, and vice versa.

Load is also used for nine dishes of ore, each dish being about half a hundred weight.