coasting trade and foreign commerce of all countries.

The next year promises to witness new lines of ocean steamers, connecting this country with England, France, Germany, and South America, and traversing the coast from New York to New Orleans.

"A quarter of a century ago, and there were not more than a thousand tons of anthracite annually raised and exported in all this Union; now the increase alone is more than a thousand tons per diem, and compounding rapidly upon that.

"But still we can form no accurate estimate of the future increase from the past. New elements are daily introduced into the problem, of which no human intellect can determine the value.

"The introduction of the railway system over all Europe and even Asia -over this continent and the West India Islands-over Russia, and even into the Papal States, offer a guarantee of a future consumption of iron and coal, and all the chief mineral products of the earth, to which no bounds can be assigned.

"Each railway requires iron for its track, engines, cars, and frequently for its stations. Each new steamer requires coal to drive it-iron for its engine, and sometimes for its hull-and five tons of coal. for each ton of iron it consumes.

"Every steam boat that is launched, and every road that is forced into the interior, gives birth to new enterprise, new wants, and new commerce. "The manufacture of the iron, and the propulsion of the machinery, require coal; the quantity increases with the expansion of the railway system; the system extends the area of civilized population, and consequent agricultural wealth. This wealth needs transportation, and this transportation again needs coal and iron.

"In this country, peculiarly, the consumption of this fuel is increasing with the general increase of population where it is employed-with the wider area over which it is used-with each new purpose to which it is appliedwith the growth of every description of manufacture requiring power-with every new improvement by which the cost of its conveyance is diminished, and with the extension of inland, coast, and ocean navigation."

Thus far has been exhibited in the foregoing pages an interesting picture of the wonderful advance made, in our day, in the application of the mineral combustibles. We have seen, and let us note the fact, that this enormous advance has not been limited to a single district, but that it has simultaneously proceeded in all the coal-producing countries of the earth. Doubtless a very large portion of this is ascribable to the prodigious extension of steam power, occasioning a corresponding demand for mineral combustibles. We should exceed our prescribed limits were we to adduce the evidences of this increased application of steam, through the agency of coal. Nor, indeed, is it essential to our purpose. But we are quite sure that we cannot more appropriately terminate this introductory section, than by citing the following expressive passage, which we find in the Bulletin of the Central Commission of Statistics in the kingdom of Belgium; to the author of which we have here to acknowledge our obligations.

"Industry has undergone a complete transformation since the establish.

*The power thus convertible to the purpose of lightening the labour of man was felicitously illustrated by Sir I. F. W. Herschel, in the remark that the ascent of Mount Blanc from Chamouni is considered, and with justice, as the most toilsome feat that a strong man can execute in two days. The combustion of two pounds of coal would place him on the summit.

ment of machinery. The development of mechanism is owing to the application of steam as the moving power. Steam has been substituted, in a multitude of operations, for the natural agents. If we had to write the history of industry, we should represent man seeking at first to direct, to his advantage, the elements of nature, and subsequently creating new forces and more powerful agents. In the first period, man finds masters in every thing which surrounds him; the means at his disposal are very confined; his knowledge and his capital are limited; regulations badly conceived; the small extension of outlets; the difficulties of transportation;-all restrain his capability of production.

"In the second period, the state of affairs changes: he has subdued the natural elements; he disposes them at his will; the science of mechanics procures him the most powerful agents; natural philosophy, chemistry, discover to him a part of their treasures; capitals are no longer locked up; the slender profits of agriculture impel them back towards industrial occupations. Interior shackles have disappeared; treaties of commerce establish, between the people, fixed relations, which daily enlarge their social and political connections. Distances are effaced; routes are multiplied; and steam, after having ploughed the rivers and the seas, skims the earth in a rapid flight. Commerce unites together every people; the market is enlarged. Production, which outstrips all local necessities, urgently demands new outlets: embarrassment no longer attaches to production; the trouble henceforth rests in the distribution,

"The employment of the combustible mineral, COAL, in the smelting of iron, has emancipated the IRON manufactory. Henceforward the mineral comes to seek the fuel. Steam is prepared as the motive power: the forgemaster, the founder, are no longer confined to the banks of rivers, or the depths of the forests, far from the inhabited places. Industry has broken her fetters; commerce is set free, at least in the interior. Gigantic highfurnaces arise; forges, bar-iron works multiply; iron receives every shape; manufactories fill the world with machines. One might even say that each operation of industry gives birth to new marvels, and that all contribute to the successive and unbounded enlargement of productive forces and of new agents.

"Thus, coal produces steam; steam fashions the metals which serve to fabricate the machines. The implements of various trades, leaving the workshops, are distributed through every branch of industry. Steam becomes the universal agent; if she is the producer, she is at the same time the vehicle of production.*

"The powers of man are centupled; he is no longer the serf of the creation; he is rather the king. The barons of feudality have made room, by their side, for the nobility produced by industry. The sword commands no more; it is capital which commands. To the state of strife, of warlike antagonism, succeeds a regime of industrial competition and of exchanges. Men know themselves and each other better; national characteristics are obliterated; it seems that humanity is invested with a new form; organization is established between states; between continents."

"It is as yesterday only, so to say, that steam has been employed as a moving power; and yet it already furnishes the globe with a force estimated at more than ten millions of horses, or sixty millions of men." M. Michal Chevalier.

We would here refer to an excellent article in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, June, 1846, by Mr. C. Frazer, on "The Moral Influence of Steam."

"Mineral and metallurgic industry is, with agriculture, the most vital element of our country's prosperity. Coal is the most essential agent of all industry; the foundry, the iron, constitute merely the instruments, the ele ments of riches."*

SECTION II.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES IN RELATION TO COAL.

Terms of synonymous signification, many of which are employed in this work.

English, Coal, Pit Coal, Brown Coal, Sea Coal, Stone Coal; Collier, a coal miner; Colliery, a coal mine. Saron, Col. Dutch, Koolen, Steenkull, Steenkoolen. German, Kohlen, Steenkohle, Schwarz Kohle, Pech Kohle, Kannelkohle, Moor Kohle, Blatter Kohle. Danish, Kul. Sicedish, Kohl, Stenkol. Cornish, Kolon. Irish, Guel. French, Houille, Charbon-de-terre. Belgic, Houille, Houillieres, coal pits. Italian, Carboni Fossili. Latin, and Greek, Lith-anthrax. Portuguese, Carvoes de terra, ou de Pedra. Russian, Ugolj, Kamennoe. Spanish, Carbon de tierra, Rock coal; Carbon de Piedra, Stone coal. Welsh, Culm. Swedish, Kolm. English, Charcoal, carbonized ligni. French, Charbon de bois.

de lena.

wood. Italian, Carbone di legna. Carbo German, Reine Kohle. Spanish, Carbon

English, Pitch. German, Pech. French, Poix.

English, Jet. German, Jayet.

English, Coke. Swedish, Stenkolstybb. French, Charbon de terre, Charbon de bois. English, Charcoal. German, Kohlenstoff.

Irish, Peat. Scotch, Peat. English, Turf. German, Torf. French, Tourbe, Tourbiere. English, Turbary. New England, U. S., Tug.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF COAL.

In his 25th chapter of the " History of Fossil Fuel," the author dilates on the influence which future discoveries of deposits of coal in foreign countries and the increased employment of the combustibles in manufactures there might have upon the industrial operations and local interests of Great Britain. Inquiries of that sort would scarcely be expedient here, inasmuch as we do not advocate the exclusive interest of any country, and acknowledge no preference for the prosperity of one section to the disadvantage of its neighbour. We espouse no cause save that of economic geology and the useful arts associated with it; contemplating these subjects with reference to their practical benefits, to their commercial and productive value, present and prospective. We estimate them in proportion as they are interesting in science, and conducive to the well-doing of the mass. With

* Bulletin de la Commission Centrale de Statistique, Bruxelles, 1843.

such views we seek not to define how far the possession of local advantages, the discovery of new mineral deposits or of improved appliances and facilities, may retard or accelerate rival interests. It is not our purpose to inquire into the injury which particular establishments or regions might sustain when placed in a state of competition with others which happen to enjoy a more favourable state of circumstances.

Two great facts, beyond all, stand prominent. It is certain that as manufacturing and productive industry take root and flourish almost exclusively in the cool and temperate zones, so in them do the coal formations and all the most useful mineral productions prevail in their greatest abundance. Our scientific maps and investigations confirm the one, and national statistics determine the other. Hence, the climates which are most congenial to laborious occupations, the latitudes which are best adapted to the more energetic pursuits of man, are precisely those where, fortunately, have been placed beneath his feet the raw materials most essential to his use. At the same time, the process of acquiring those materials, forms, of itself, one of the most valuable sources of his prosperity.

Between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer repose all the principal carboniferous formations of our planet. Some detached coal deposits, it is true, exist above and below those limits, but they appear, so far as we know, to be of limited extent. Many of these southern coal-fields are of doubtful geological age. A few are supposed to approximate to the class of true coals, as they are commonly styled; others are decidedly of the brown coal and tertiary period, while the remainder belong to various intermediate ages, or possess peculiar characters which render them of doubtful geological origin.

In the high northern latitudes it has for some time been known that a species of coal exists on both sides of Greenland, and more recently it has been determined at various points of the Arctic ocean, between Baffin's Bay, and Berhring's Straits. It is understood that the coal on the west coast of Greenland, and at Disco Island and Hasen Island is of the species denominated lignite, or the most recent of the mineral coals. Of the carboniferous formations discovered by the several exploring expeditions towards the North Pole, some are of the acknowledged brown coal age, others have been imperfectly examined and described, and may perhaps be of the same geological age as those enormously extended deposits which stretch through the central part of the American continent. The coals of Mellville Island and Byam Martin's Island certainly appear to be of the true coal period. We know that coal exists, at numerous intermediate points, from the 75th to the 27th degree of north latitude, in America, and also that it is worked on the Salado and Rio Grande rivers in Mexico, for the use of the steamers.

Southward of the Tropic of Cancer the existence of coal, corresponding with the European and American hard coals, is somewhat uncertain. There seems to be none on the South American continent, unless it be at Cerro Pasco, which needs confirmation, or in the province of Santa Catherina, in Brazil. On the African continent we have had vague accounts of coal in Ethiopia and at Mozambique, also in Madagascar, and quite recently we have had intelligence of large quantities of coal in the newly ceded territory above Port Natal on the eastern side of Africa, but we believe no geologist has examined those sites. In the Chinese and Birmese empires only brown coal appears to approach the tropic. Southward of the Asiatic continent we are uncertain of the exact character of the coal deposits, such as occur abundantly in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and neighbouring islands.

In New South Wales the great coal range on the eastern margin of that continent was formerly sometimes considered to be like the Newcastle coal in England, and sometimes it was thought to be only brown coal; and indeed it is very certain that lignite does exist there; but the recent investigations of Count Strzelecki suggest that the epoch of the principal coal formations of Australia and Van Diemen's Land approaches somewhat to the oolite period. This coal differs essentially from that of any known European formation, but bears a strong resemblance to the Burdwan coal of India.

We may mention here, incidentally, that good coal is not essentially limited to the carboniferous period of the European geologists, but may and does exist, of excellent quality, in formations both of older and later origin. The Richmond coal-field of America is now shown to be of an age not much, if any, anterior to the older oolite series. Mr. Lyell has observed that no estimate of the probable value of the coal of India can be formed by comparing it with coal of the same age in Europe. Sir Henry de la Beche has also remarked, that it was incorrect to suppose that in all other countries the most valuable coals would be found in rocks agreeing in age with the English coal measures. Those of Australia and Northern India, for instance, resemble each other in quality and in their fossil flora, yet both are dissimilar from those of the English coal-fields, and are evidently, like the Virginia coal alluded to, of an entirely different origin.

The evidence as to the facts contained in the foregoing sketch, will be found in detail in succeeding pages, and is especially illustrated by the map of the world, prepared for this volume. From what has already been stated, it will be seen that it is impracticable, in numerous instances, to announce the true place in the geological scale, of formations which pass under the common denomination of coal. In some of these cases they have received no scientific investigation, and in others the results, if ascertained at all, have not reached us.

Of course, we have not yet arrived at the period when we could pronounce with any approach to certainty, on the actual number of coal basins in the world. Were we to venture an opinion, we should rate the number at from two hundred and fifty to three hundred principal coal-fields, and many of these are subdivided, by the disturbed position of the strata into subordinate basins.

COMPARATIVE Value of gold AND SILVER, AND OF COAL AND IRON.

A Spanish writer, not long since, instituted a comparison between the productive value of the silver and gold mines of America and that of the coal mines of England. The author exhibits a balance in favor of the lat ter of nearly two hundred and thirty millions of francs*=£9,286,000 sterling, annually.

Baron Humboldt, at the commencement of the

nineteenth century, estimated the produce

of the gold and silver in North and South America at

Which sum at the rate of 4s. 3d. a dollar amount Mr. Jacob estimated the annual value of the precious metals from the American mines, between the years 1800 and 1810, at

History of Fossil Fuel, p. 474.

$43,500,000

£9,233,750

to

$,47,061,000 £10,000,000

+ McCulloch's Geographical Gazetteer, p. 80.