72 Phosphate Rocks of South Carolina, 
Coal was imported from England and other States, 
and the farmers were “ pulling up stakes,” emigrating 
West, and selling their farms to immigrants. Just 
then the immense beds of coal, whose outcroppings 
had been trodden under foot for eighty or ninety years 
as so much useless stuff, and therefore called ‘“ Stone 
Coal,’ was discovered to be of some value; in a short 
time scientific men pointed out the mode of using it, 
and Stone Coal, or what is now known as Axthracite, 
is consumed at $10 per ton, and those lands in the 
Coal Fields of the Pennsylvania Basin are worth as 
many dollars as they brought cents a few years ago, 
and now millions of tons are annually exported. 
Why were these Coal Fields not utilized fifty or 
eighty years ago? 
Again, the Eastern Whalemen after a cruise of one 
or two years have of late been returning with a fourth 
or a half cargo of oil, reporting the whales as almost 
extinct. Sperm oil advanced to an unheard of price. 
Down goes the rod of the Geologist, and up comes 
the Petroleum! The Pennsylvania Petroleum Wells 
yield more o/ in one month than the whale fisheries 
did in a year! Why was Petroleum not discovered 
fifty years ago? 
The granitic soils of New England had also of late 
years become so poor they did not yield vegetable 
“stuff” enough for the support of its quota of grass- 
hoppers, and her energetic sons were daily emigrating 
South and West for richer lands. 
Again the joyful news is heard of the discovery of 
whole islands of guanos in the Pacific, and immedi- 
