1864. | Mining, Mineralogy, and Metallurgy. 139 
In the Report presented by the Coal Trade at the recent Mecting 
of the British Association, the rate at which the reporters suppose the 
exhaustion of this coal-field is going on in 1861, is given at 21,777,570 
tons.* This quantity is above that which is given in the ‘ Mineral 
Statistics for 1862’ (we there find 19,360,356 tons recorded as the 
quantity raised and sold; but the coal wasted is not reported, owing 
to the uncertainty of the returns obtained). 
Mr. Edward Hull has devoted much attention to this important 
subject. He calculates that the total remaining supply of coal 
amounts to 79,843 millions of tons, and “that in the whole of Great 
Britain the supply is sufficient to last for upwards of a thousand years 
with a production of 72 millions of tons annually.” 
It has been already shown that the general rate of exhaustion has 
exceeded this computation by twelve millions of tons. It is not, how- 
ever, probable that there will be any long continuance of such a rapid 
increase. The progress of civilization has ever been a system of 
undulations, the maximum of elevation is reached, and the still onward 
wave subsides, the momentum acquired in its decline being the power 
by which it again rises to its highest level. Let it not be inferred 
from this that we suppose our commerce and manufactures to have 
reached their highest point. It is believed that a large extension is 
before us, but we argue, from the history of the past, that our progress 
will not be a system of continuous rise in the future. The question 
requiring the limits of time within which the coal-fields of these 
Islands will be exhausted has been hastily propounded, and no less 
hastily replied to. No satisfactory computation of the quantities of 
workable coal remaining in our several coal-fields has yet been made. 
Mr, EK. Hull, in his work already quoted, has given the best existing 
information, but those most intimately acquainted with special locali- 
ties, all alike pronounce the evidence to be incomplete. This is 
admitted, by the grant of a small sum from the funds of the British 
Association, to collect exact information on this point. The grant 
is so small, for the amount of work which is to be done, that nothing 
satisfactory can be expected from this assistance. The Government 
having at its command a trained body of men, of superior scientific 
knowledge, in the officers of the Geological Survey, with twelve In- 
spectors of Collieries, each man well acquainted with his own district, 
and a Mining Record office with its statistical returns, might, by a 
judicious arrangement, and a sufficient grant of money, determine the 
question within very small limits of error. This stock-taking would be 
a very important one, bearing as it does, on the future of every manu- 
facturing and commercial industry, which has placed our country the 
‘foremost amongst the nations,—a position which we desire to retain. 
Referring, of course to their own field only, the Reporters on the 
Northern coal-field say, “ Until further and more extensive explora- 
* “On Coal, Coke, and Coal Mining,’ by Nicholas Wood, F.G.S., John Taylor, 
John Marley, and J. W. Pease, in ‘ History of the Trade and Manufactures of 
the Tyne, Wear, and Tees.” Spon: London, 1863. 
+ ‘The Coal Fields of Great Britain,’ by Edward Hull, B.A. Second edition. 
Stanford : London. 
