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We have already considered the various kinds of plants and trees which have been discovered as contributing their remains to the formation of coal, and have now to attempt an explanation of how it came to be formed in so regular a manner over so wide an area. Each of the British coal-fields is fairly extensive.
Very serviceable lignites of Cretaceous age are found on the Pacific slope, to which age those of Vancouver's Island and Saskatchewan River are referable. Other coal-fields of less importance are found between Lakes Huron and Erie, where the measures cover an area of 5000 square miles, and also in Rhode Island. In British North America we find extensive deposits of valuable coal-measures.
Gold and silver are found in nearly every province of the Empire, while the central districts contain the largest coal-fields upon the globe. Nearly one-fourth of the human race is supposed to be comprised within the Chinese Empire. They look to the past, not to the future, and the word "progress" has apparently to them no real significance.
The French claimed in addition, the districts of the Saar, with their valuable coal-fields, a portion of which had been left to France after the first abdication of Napoleon but annexed to Prussia after his defeat at Waterloo; and they contended that if the German territories west of the Rhine were not to be annexed to France, they must at least be separated from Germany, which had secured a threatening military position mainly through their possession.
Dawson has enumerated more than 150 species, two-thirds of which are European, a greater agreement than can be said to exist between the same Nova Scotia flora and that of the coal-fields of the United States.
Stephenson, bethinking him of the model by which he had just been illustrating the Belgian coal-fields, said to his friend, “By the bye, Sopwith, I was afraid the king would see the inside of my hat; it’s a shocking bad one!” Little could George Stephenson, when brakesman at a coal-pit, have dreamt that, in the course of his life, he should be admitted to an interview with a monarch, and describe to him the manner in which the geological foundations of his kingdom had been laid!
There are grounds for believing that the produce of the various coal-fields of the world does not at present much exceed 100,000,000 of tons annually, and therefore our own country contributes more than three-fifths of the total amount.
Thus, the Reading Railroad, from Philadelphia up the Schuylkill to Reading, and thence to Pottsville, is employed entirely in the transport of coal from the Lehigh coal-fields to tide-water in Philadelphia; and it is a very economically operated road, considering the large amount of ascent encountered, because the load goes down hill, and the weight of the train is limited only by the number of empty cars that the engine can take back.
This latter stretch would have been well-nigh impossible for open boats but for the fact that the numerous mud bars and islands thrown out by the river afforded a sheltered course. These inside channels, though shallow, were of sufficient depth to allow small craft to navigate and had long been used as a route to the coal-fields.
It cannot be deemed uninteresting to inquire what are the repositories of coal that can supply the metropolis and the southern counties, when no more can be obtained from the Tyne and the Wear. The only coal-fields of any extent on the eastern side of England, between London and Durham, are those of Derbyshire and those in the west riding of Yorkshire.
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