in fact it has no limit, for every day furnishes new facts to be registered. The process never ends, because the elements are inexhaustible. We are reminded, however, by the bulk of the matter on hand that we have reached a point at which we may consign the work to the press.

Preparing these pages in the United States, we are not unaware of the disadvantages which result from the want of access to many official European documents, and of reference to minor authorities such as rarely find their way into American libraries. We may, in some degree, counteract these deficiencies by communicating to Europeon inquirers a great amount of information which our position has enabled us to acquire in America. These persons cannot but contemplate with interest the enormous extent of the North Americ n coal-fields, whose very existence, scarce a quarter of a century back, was unknown, even on their actual sites.

Of the surprising impulse to the interests of the New World which has been communicated by this recent knowledge, this newly acquired power; of the influence it has manifested in many of the commercial and on all of the industrial departments; of the moral consequences which are perceptible in a thousand forms, we shall hereafter submit abundant proofs. It will be much more difficult to speculate as to the position to which these combined elements of prosperity may conduct us in the next quarter or half century. We draw the most sanguine inferences with relation to the future, because the experience of the past twenty-five years fully justifies such flattering anticipations. In that comparatively small period, the consumption of mineral fuel in America has wonderfully augmented: and yet, in the corresponding time in Europe, we are not less astonished to observe the parallel advance in the production of coal, and in the extension of manufactures throughout all the principal countries. In fact, the whole civilized world seems to have made a simultaneous advance in productive industry. It will be our task to point out the exact relative proportions of the progress thus made by each country, during a long series of years and in several successive periods or intervals.

Something further yet remains to be said in relation to the objects contemplated in this volume, and of the several matters to which we have given a place therein.

Our range would have been but narrow had we limited the investigation to mineral coal alone. It is well known that vast deposits of combustible substances have been denominated and described as coal, which the lights of science now shew belong to a more recent class, and to a variety of geological ages or epochs. We refer to the brown coal or lignite class, so abundantly distributed.

In a large portion of Europe, such as the Austrian, Belgian, French and Prussian dominions, the distinction is perfectly well understood, and all official mining statistics are, in these countries, uniformly arranged under their

appropriate classification. In many cases where errors have prevailed, we have been enabled to correct them by the aid of recent geological investigations. Still, modern science has not yet penetrated every where. There remains, at numerous, but rarely visited points, vast fields of so-called coal, whose true geological age we have yet to learn. For the present, therefore, we are unable to class these combustibles either with the true coals as the older series, or with the tertiary lignites as the newer, or with any intermediate deposits. This being the case, it was obviously inexpedient to exclude the LIGNITES from our pages, independently of their intrinsic value as combustibles. Brown coal is a valuable substitute for the older coal where there is a scarcity of the superior variety, as we shall have many opportunities of showing.

In like manner, while describing the lignites, PEAT seemed to demand a proportionate share of our attention, and to claim a place in our columns. The transition from one condition of these combustibles to another is oftentime so imperceptible that they seem to have almost equal claims on our notice. In its remarkable diffusion over the northern hemisphere where artificial heat is so indispensable, and where timber and other descriptions of fuel are so little abundant, turf or peat forms a substitute of inestimable worth. In its adaptation to numberless useful purposes, such as the manufacture of iron, the production of gas, &c., modern science has shown that it possesses qualities which heretofore were but little suspected. Thus, it will be seen, our list comprehends a large series of valuable products; extending upwards from carbonized peat at one extremity to hard coals and compact anthracites at the other.

So closely do some bituminized coals approach to the mineral bitumens, some of which have even been denominated coal, as those in the West Indies and South America, that we have found it advisable to include the BITUMINOUS AND RESINOUS MINERALS. We were unwilling to reject this numerous class, which comprises the solid bitumens of the tropics; the asphalts of France, of Italy, of Syria and numberless other countries; the petroleum of Arabia, of Persia, of Birmah and Ava; the Naphtha of Rangoon, and Tartary and Georgia; the amber of Pomerania, of Saxony and Siberia; the mellite or honeystone of Thuringia, and the retinites of Moravia and England. A number of these substances accompany the carboniferous formations; others arise from the midst of primary and metamorphic and igneous rocks, while still more accompany, or are embedded in the lignite beds and tertiary coals of every part of the world.

We have even added, to complete our series of combustibles, official returns of the annual amount and value of the wood and timber furnished by the forests of France, Austria, the Tyrol, Styria, Illyria, Galicia, Bohemia, &c. We did not contemplate, in preparing this work, to enter extensively into

B

the important topic of the statistics of IRON, but we have found it so interwoven with matters essential to our main subject, that a considerable mass of information has been necessarily incorporated in our pages, where will be found the latest estimates and returns of the amount of manufactured iron in all the principal producing countries, illustrated by a diagram of their respective proportions.

Explanatory tables of the current monies, weights and measures of all the leading nations; a variety of statements of commercial facts; details of the respective tariffs, customs and international regulations, in relation to coal; the progress of railroads and canals; of steam power and navigation, and a vast series of analytical tables, besides the maps and diagrams, also occupy portions of the present volume. Among other duties, that of bringing to uniform denominations and a common standard the weights, measures and currency of so many nations, is by no means the lightest. The principal results in our tables have been calculated in the three standards of France, England and the United States.

Where the range of inquiry is so wide, the number of documents which we have had to investigate is correspondingly large. We have endeavoured to designate our authority for every material fact which we have adopted. This recognition, we conceive, is not only in strict justice due to those authorities, but it bestows the sanction of their names, and the weight of their testimony to every page and paragraph of this volume.

Let us add further, that the practice is attended with a convenience which every inquirer can appreciate,-the enumeration of standard authors and the direct reference to their pages. The whole series thus forms, in the aggregate, a copious catalogue of statistical and scientific authorities. The Index, we cannot but think, will be found to concentrate a vast mass of information which has heretofore been dispersed through hundreds of volumes in different languages, and constitutes of itself an epitome or condensation of the entire work.

Of course some embarrassments have, from time to time, been experienced in the arrangement of our statistics. Discrepancies, for instance, frequently appear in the commercial returns of different countries. Thus the returns of the coal exported to France from Great Britain do not strictly correspond with the French tables of imports from the latter country. In like manner, similar variations appear in the official reports of Belgium, Prussia and France. Under the different circumstances of commercial classification, or of local registration, and probably of occasional changes of destination, it would be unreasonable to expect exact conformity.

In a recent bulletin of the central statistical commission of the kingdom of Belgium, something is said on the difficulty which exists in comparing documents drawn up at different sources. Great Britain, it is remarked, has no corps of state engineers, notwithstanding that a desire has been expressed at

different times, even by persons versed in the art of mining operations. In Belgium and in France, those who are engaged in this branch of industry occupy themselves with energy in its details, but submit to the control of the administration, by whose agents every important particular is ascertained and carefully registered. In England, the information of necessity is less precise. The produce of her coal mines is estimated by the number of tons transported by sea to foreign or domestic ports, and on the canals and railroads inland, chiefly to the port of London. A rough estimate remains to be made of the amount conveyed in the interior or consumed upon the spot. It is impossible therefore, to be precise as to the quantity really produced annually in that country.

One European government in the public mining returns, confines itself only to statements of total production, as in Prussia. In this country they calculate the value of the combustibles at the places of extraction: in that, at the centres of consumption; and in a third, at the places of embarkation. Here, the tables furnish the estimated value of the crude minerals; there, their value after they have undergone different preparations. The elements of comparison are often wanting.

It can scarcely be expected that in so new and extensive a country as the United States of America, any organized system is in effective operation for determining the amount of coal yearly raised there. In regard to anthracite, the great avenues from the mines to tide water admit of exact returns of the quantity annually transported, and means exist, in fact, of ascertaining, through the returns of the mining establishments, the true yearly production.

Not so with the production of bituminous coal in the interior. Of this we are wholly uninformed, and the area of the coal-fields is so large, that it seems futile to hazard even the roughest calculation. In 1840, an official attempt was made to acquire that information through the instrumentality of the Census Act, but it proved, as might be expected, a decided and acknowledged failure. In 1845, the Secretary of the Treasury, in conformity with the direction of the Senate, made a report of 419 pages, 6th January, in relation to the statistics of the United States. From no county or state in the Union was a single return obtained as to the coal mines. During the same year, the Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing the inquiry, with reference to the settlement of the proposed tariff, issued circulars throughout all the states, asking information, among other statistics, as to the mines, their produce and prices. His report thereon of 957 pages, dated 3d December 1845, elicited no useful result on this head, nor a single return relative to coal.

The wide distribution of property in America is unfavourable to the collection of such statistics. The process must, at all times, be unpopular, and the results extremely uncertain. This species of investigation savours too much of scrutiny into the private concerns of men, and is unsuited to the spirit of republican institutions.