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But Germany has only 1,770; Belgium, 510; France, 2,086; and Russia only in her expansion of territory leads Europe in this respect, and has now 30,000 square miles of coal-beds. But see the use England makes of this material: in 1877, she took out of the ground 134,179,968 tons. The United States the same year took out 50,000,000 tons; Germany, 48,000,000; France, 16,000,000; Belgium, 14,000,000.
Later yet, large spaces within the interior sea having risen to the surface, great marshes or forests of strange types of vegetation grew and deposited their remains to form coal-beds. Many times over such forests were formed, only to be destroyed by the oscillations of the land surface.
They constitute our coal-beds, which, though much worn away by rain and sea, still cover a large part of the land surface.
In the East, in England, and in other parts of Europe, vast marshes existed in this period, and the rank vegetation of these marshy areas formed the coal-beds, with which the Carboniferous there abounds.
My only hope was that, at all events, the southern extremity of the island might be disengaged; for I was very anxious to land, in order to examine some coal-beds which are said to exist in the upper strata of the sandstone formation. This expectation was doomed to complete disappointment.
In the United States there are about 120,000 square miles underlaid by known workable coal-beds, besides what yet remains to be discovered; while on the cliffs of Nova Scotia the coal-seams can be seen one over the other for many hundred feet, and showing how the coal was originally formed.
Hence, the beginning of their great industries, which made England rich in proportion as her authority and chance of trade expanded over distant islands and continents. But this would not have been possible without the third advantage which I shall mention, and that is: III. Coal. England's power and wealth rested upon her coal-beds.
Much of the surface of the earth is clothed in a light vestment of life, which, back in geologic time, seems to have more completely enveloped it than at present, as both the arctic and the antarctic regions bear evidence in their coal-beds and other fossil remains of luxuriant vegetable growths.
The shuffling and the deformation of the earth's surface which attended the laying down of the coal-beds is not anywhere evident. The hand of that wonderful husbandman, Father Time, has smoothed it all out.
He had ideas to shoot across future Ages; provide against the shrinkage of our Coal-beds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening, jumbling, threatening excess of population in these Islands, in Europe, America, all over our habitable sphere. Now that Mrs.
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