certain hewers above others. Our Cornish miners, fagged by climbing, and by high temperature, contending with rocks of excessive hardness, and, after all, earning rarely more than £3 10s. or £3 158. per month, offer a strange contrast to colliers of the North, who can commonly make their 6s. per day, and have often houses free of rent, and coals, and schooling for their children at a nominal charge; and to the Welsh colliers, who in a good stall of the rich Aberdare coal will get their 8s., or even 10s., a day.*

Truly, as contrasted with other men, the colliers in well-conducted pits have not so much to grumble over as they are made by their interested friends to believe; nor do the methods so popular among them of strikes and combinations, and proposals for interfering with the management, appear suited to gain them enduring safety and comfort. In and about the pits, especially, it is plain that the spirit of insubordination, and opposition to the masters and their rules, are inconsistent with the well-being of either party. And a ship in a storm, with all the sailors commanding, would not be in a more dangerous plight than a fiery colliery with its discipline sapped, and no one in full authority.

*To quote a special instance, the highest wage made in March, 1866, at the Navigation Colliery, Mountain Ash, was no less than 128. 8d. per day for twenty-three days.

CHAPTER XIX.

DURATION OF THE BRITISH COALFIELDS.

THE astonishing increase in the consumption of coal within the last half century has kept pace with the advancement of various arts and sciences, and has necessitated a constant improvement in the methods and appliances used in its extraction. Our knowledge of the mineral resources of this and other countries has during the same time been placed on a footing so much more definite than formerly, as to excite in the reflecting mind, conversant with the heavy drain now making on our coalfields, a reasonably-founded anxiety as to their duration.

Contented security may in its ignorance of the facts assume, and persons interested in maintaining their own special trade, may represent that the coal-seams are "practically inexhaustible," and may stigmatise as "alarmists" those who would invite attention to the bearings of a question so vital to our immediate posterity; but a fair examination of the statistics above set forth, and of the local conditions of our coalbearing districts, will show that at least the time for prudent forethought has arrived.

In the last few years, accurate surveys have shown the certain boundaries of most of our coalfields, formed by the actual rise to the surface of the ground of the foundation rocks, in and under which no coal at all is contained. In some other instances they exhibit a surface boundary, beyond which much may be hoped for,

but where in many cases the uncertainty and expense will greatly reduce the value of the extended territory, or, in other words, increase the average charge at which the coals will be raised.

Knowing, therefore, most of the edges, and pretty nearly the depth of all our recognised stores of coal, let us remember at what rate we are now digging them out. The amount of coal raised in this country in 1864 shows that, supposing 1,300 tons be obtained per foot thick per acre, out of 1,600 which it actually contains, there are now clearing out in every hour, day and night, for every day in the year, 4 acres of coal of 2 feet thick-1 acre every quarter of an hour! There can here be no reproduction, nothing to grow again ;

we are drawing," as an able writer* has well put it, "more and more upon a capital which yields no annual interest, but once turned to light, and heat, and force, is gone for ever into space." How fares it with some of our best-known districts?-do they, or do they not, show symptoms of a change? In Shropshire the workings have passed away from the exhausted western side of the field to group themselves along the eastern: in Staffordshire, the famous Dudley seam will in a few years be as a tale that is told: in the great northern coalfield almost every available "royalty" is taken up, large tracts have been cleared out, and already projects are afoot for leaving terra firma and working out under the North Sea.

It must, then, be understood that the rapid exhaustion of certain districts, and the calculation of what coal remains, are not the speculations of theorists, but the fair deductions from weights and measures, ascer

* Mr. Jevons, "On the Coal Question."

tained with a great amount of practical care and discrimination.

I need not refer to the older estimates of the duration of our coalfields, for neither had the earlier writers any idea of the enormous future increase of demand, nor were they provided with the requisite data for reasonable approximations. It was only in the classical coalfield of Durham and Northumberland that the position and character of the seams were so well known to the viewers as to admit, many years ago, of approach to accuracy.

Mr. Greenwell, a colliery viewer thoroughly acquainted with the district, taking the quantity producible from each several seam, including what lies below the magnesian limestone, as well as a width of two miles under the sea, calculated in 1846 that 331 years would, at the then existing rate, exhaust the whole area. At that time only 10,000,000 of tons per annum of round coal were raised. In 1854, when the amount had reached 14,000,000, and a larger proportion of small coal came to be available, Mr. T. Y. Hall, also a member of the Northern Institute of Mining Engineers, estimated the duration at 365 years, but stated that it would be reduced to 256 years if the demand were to increase to 20,000,000. And now, since the output has in 1864 reached upwards of 22,000,000 of tons, and there is every reason to expect a constant increase of production, it is obvious that the time thus estimated must be greatly abbreviated, and that Sir William Armstrong, in calling attention to the rapid exhaustion of coal, in his address at Newcastle in 1863, based his argument on no unsound foundation.

In 1859, Mr. Edward Hull attempted the more

ambitious task of making a similar calculation for the whole of the British coalfields. As a laborious geologist on the Government survey, Mr. Hull had enjoyed excellent opportunities of learning the structure of several of the coal districts, but with respect to others had to rely on data of various authority. In each case he has measured the available area, has adopted from the sections an average thickness of workable coal, and deducted from the total quantity thus obtained an allowance (no doubt difficult to agree upon) for the denudation of the upper seams. A large fraction is then allowed for quantity worked out, and loss in future workings, leaving us a total amount in stock of about 80,000,000,000 tons for the entire kingdom. All the coal lying at a greater depth than 4,000 feet is excluded from this estimate as being beyond reach, but a very large area, amounting to an increase of onethird, is added to the coalfields, for extension beneath newer formations.

We may cavil at some of Mr. Hull's numbers, and disagree with his notions about the limit of depth, but his little book is a creditable summary of the chief features of our coal resources, and his approximate general estimate the only one which is so founded on facts as to deserve attention; whilst especially on the subject of reaching coal beneath the Permian and Trias formations, no previous author has approached it with the same amount of practical knowledge. When we pass from the descriptive part to the reasoning on the coal supply, we find arguments of a more questionable character, some of which have since been combated by Mr. Jevons in his clear and forcible work,. "On the Coal Question," whilst others appear to have led to