220 SCIENCE Itf SHORT CHAPTERS. 



solved by practical experiments of the kind above named. Now that 

 the best man for making these experiments is gone, somebody else 

 should undertake them. Unfortunately, they must of necessity be 

 rather expensive. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



THE LIMITS OF OUR COAL SUPPLY.* 



ESTIMATING the actual consumption of coal for home use in Great 

 Britain at 110 millions of tons per annum, a rise of eight shillings 

 per ton to consumers is equivalent to a tax of 44 millions per animm. 

 These are the figures taken by Sir William Armstrong in his address 

 at Newcastle last February. As the recent abnormal rise in the value 

 of coal has amounted to more than this, consumers have been paying 

 at some periods above a million per week as premium on fuel, even 

 after making fair deduction for the rise of price necessarily due to 

 the diminishing value of gold. 



Are we, the consumers of coal, to write off all this as a dead loss, 

 or have we gained any immediate or prospective advantage that may 

 be deducted from the bad side of the account ? I suspect that we 

 shall gain sufficient to ultimately balance the loss, and, even after 

 that, to leave something on the profit side. 



The abundance of our fuel has engendered a shameful wastefulness 

 that is curiously blind and inconsistent. As a typical example of 

 this inconsistency, I may mention a characteristic incident. A party 

 of young people were sitting at supper in the house of a colliery 

 manager. Among them was the vicar of the parish, a very jovial and 

 genial man, but most earnest withal in his vocation. Jokes and 

 banterings were freely flung across the table, and no one enjoyed the 

 fun more heartily than the vicar ; but presently one unwary youth 

 threw a fragment of bread- crust at his opposite neighbor, and thus 

 provoked retaliation. The countenance of the vicar suddenly 

 changed, and in stern clerical tones he rebuked the wickedness of 

 thus wasting the bounties of the Almighty. A general silence fol- 

 lowed, and a general sense of guilt prevailed among the revellers. 

 At the same time, and in the same room, a blazing fire, in an ill-con- 

 structed open fireplace, was glaring reproachfully at all the guests, 

 but no one heeded the immeasurably greater and utterly irreparable 

 waste that was there proceeding. To every unit of heat that was 

 fully utilized in warming the room, there were eight or nine passing 

 up the chimney to waste their energies upon the senseless clouds and 

 boundless outer atmosphere. A large proportion of the vicar's pa- 

 rishioners are colliers, in whose cottages huge fires blaze most waste- 

 fully all day, and are left to burn all night to save the trouble of 

 relighting. The vicar diligently visits these cottages, and freely 

 admonishes where he deems it necessary ; yet he sees in this general 

 waste of coal no corresponding sinfulness to that of wasting bread. 

 Why is he so blind in one direction, while his moral vision is so 



* Wriltcn during the coal famine of 1872-73. 



