1869.] Coal WasMng. 489 



qnently for ever lost, bears a very large proportion to that raised, 

 and which could be brought to bank, if a market "were obtained 

 for it." 



Since attention was so forcibly called to the probable duration 

 of our coal supphes by Sir William Armstrong at the Meeting of 

 the British Association at Newcastle in the year 1863, measures 

 have been devised with the view of utihzing that which was formerly 

 counted as waste, and the small coal is no longer permitted to he 

 unheeded at the bottom of the pit. In collecting the slack, however, 

 in addition to any impurities which it contains as coal, such as 

 shale, u'on pyrites, &c,, there will invariably be found mixed with it 

 portions of rocky or earthy matters which have fallen from the roof 

 of the heading during working, or which may be taken off from the 

 floors of the passages whilst collecting the small coal for the purpose 

 of sending it to the surface. Under these circumstances, it is not 

 to be wondered that the slack coal thus obtained contains a much 

 greater amount of earthy impurities than does the coal from the 

 same pit, hewn and sent to bank in larger or smaller blocks. As 

 has been abeady stated, this slack coal from the pits was formerly 

 considered to be worthless, or, at any rate, not of sufficient value to 

 enable it to bear the cost of transport in order to bring it to 

 market ; recent experience has, however, shown, not only that such 

 is not the case, but that what was formerly looked upon as so much 

 refuse, may be readily sej)arated from the impurities with which it 

 is in a great measure mixed, and thus purified it obtains a ready sale 

 either for cokeing purposes or for the manufacture of artificial fuel. 



The general large yield of English coal beds may, no doubt, be 

 assigned as the chief cause which formerly led to the adoption of an 

 extravagant mode of working them, and this was further stimulated 

 by an absence of machinery for the purpose, and a want of that 

 knowledge on the subject which has in comparatively recent times 

 been acquired and put into practice. 



The inferior quahty of a portion of the coal measures of France 

 and Belgium, and, in the former country especially, the compara- 

 tively small area over which they extend, led to the adoption of 

 greater economy in working ; and it is not therefore sm-prising to 

 find that England is indebted to France for the introduction of the 

 practice of coal washing, whereby the small and formerly unpro- 

 ductive yields of coal are now raised into an important branch of 

 trade. Only a small portion of it is however brought into use in 

 the manufacture of artificial fuel. That article is at present 

 scarcely used in England, and the small quantity that is manu- 

 factured here is made almost exclusively for export. From the 

 latest returns published, namely those for 1867, it appears that 

 the amount of artificial fuel exported during that year from the 

 United Kingdom was only 150,051 tons, which may be taken to 



