BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ISAAC LEA, LL. D. XIII 



Sedgwick and Mr. Moss. Subsequently, in London, Mr. Lea met Dr. 

 Bucklaud, Mr. Babbage, and Mr. Broderip, at Mr. Stokes's, at that 

 time secretary of the Geological Society who received his friends at 

 breakfast on Sunday morning. Dr. Buckland inquired of Mr. Lea re- 

 specting the quantity of coal in the United States, stating that Jie 

 " believed we had very little," and that he had his information from a 

 very reliable source. Mr. Lea, thinking he knew from whom he had 

 received this information, took great pains to disabuse him of this false 

 impression. A large map of the United States was brought from the 

 library of Mr. Stokes and laid upon the floor, and the canon of Christ 

 Church with Mr. Lea spent several hours in the closest examination of 

 it, Dr. Buckland meanwhile filling sheet after sheet with notes. At last 

 he took his leave to meet an engagement, assuring Mr. Lea that " Eng- 

 land had enough to supply the United States when its supply should fail,^' 

 to which Mr. Lea replied that the quantity of anthracite and bitumin- 

 ous coal was almost unlimited in North America, and that when he re- 

 turned to his home he would send him a map of the country, showing 

 the extent of the coal fields, together with a copy of the section of an- 

 thracite of the Pottsville basin, which he had in manuscript. This he 

 subsequently did, and Dr. Buckland was so thoroughly convinced of the 

 truth of Mr. Lea's information that he laid the matter before the next 

 meeting of the British Association, with the letter and maps, assuring 

 the members that " when the coal fields of England should be exhausted 

 there would be plenty in the United States to supply their need." He 

 did not auticij)ate then that the great consumi)tion and exportation of 

 coal was likely to exhaust England in one hundred years, as the late 

 report to Parliament by a committee of sixteen experts has since dem- 

 onstrated. It must be borne in mind that Dr. Buckland had stated 

 "that England's prosperity is based upon her coalmines; that upon 

 their exhaustion she would return to her original barbarism." He was 

 not then aware that in many other parts of the world there existed in- 

 exhaustible quantities from which she could draw her supplies. 



While in London Mr. Lea frequently met the most eminent scientific 

 men. Among them was Mr. Vigors, the ornithologist, who was a can- 

 didate for a seat in Parliament for the county in which he was born. 

 He inquired much about the political institutions of the United States. 

 In speaking of the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, he 

 stated a circumstance which Mr. Lea had not heard while there. The 

 principal of Lincoln College, when Faraday's experiment of the mag- 

 netic spark was shown, asked him if that was "his invention." "It 

 is my discovery,''^ said Faraday. " Well, I am sorry to see it," said the 

 principal, " for it is only giving another instrument to enable the bad 

 part of our population to set fire to our barns and houses in the coun- 

 try." 



During his stay in London Mr. Lea had the i^leasure of dining at a 

 friend's with the Rev. Sydney Smith, Miss Aiken, and a few other nota- 



