2^2 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



taining it. We also love a cheerful blaze, but have a great aversion 

 to coal-smoke and tarry vapors ; and we find that we can make a 

 beautiful fire, quite inoffensive even in the middle of the room, pro- 

 vided we feed it with stale quartern loaves. We know that such fuel 

 is expensive, but can afford to pay for it, and choose to do so." 

 Would he not be shocked at the sight of the blazing loaves, if this 

 extravagance were carried out ? 



This popular inconsistency of disregarding the waste of a valuable 

 and necessary commodity, of which the supply is limited and un- 

 renewable, while we have such proper horror of wilfully wasting 

 another similar commodity which can be annually replaced as long 

 as man remains in living contact with the earth, will gradually pass 

 away when rational attention is directed to the subject. If the recent 

 very mild suggestion of a coal-famine does something toward placing 

 coal on a similar pedestal of popular veneration to that which is held 

 by the " staff of life," the million a week that it has cost the coal 

 consumer will have been profitably invested. 



Many who were formerly deaf to the exhortations of fuel econo- 

 mists are now beginning to listen. Forty shillings per ton has acted 

 like an incantation upon the spirit of Count Runiford. After an 

 oblivion of more than eighty years, his practical lessons have again 

 sprung up among us. Some are already inquiring how he managed 

 to roast 112 Ibs. of beef at the Foundling Hospital with 22 Ibs. of 

 coal, and to use the residual heat for cooking the potatoes, and why 

 it is that with all our boasted progress we do not now, in the latter 

 third of the nineteenth century, repeat that which he did in the 

 eighteenth. 



The fact that the consumption of coal in London during the first 

 four months of 1873 has, in spite of increasing population, amounted 

 to 49,707 tons less than the corresponding period of 1872, shows that 

 some feeble attempts have been made to economize the domestic 

 consumption of fuel. One very useful result of the recent scarcity of 

 coal has been the awakening of a considerable amount of general in- 

 terest in the work of stock-taking, a tedious process which improvi- 

 dent people are too apt to shirk, but which is quite indispensable to 

 sound business proceedings either of individuals or nations. 



There are many discrepancies in the estimates that have been made 

 of the total available quantity of British coal. The speculative na- 

 ture of some of the data renders this inevitable, but all authorities 

 appear to agree on one point, viz. that the amount of our supplies 

 will not be determined by the actual total quantity of coal under our 

 feet, but by the possibilities of reaching it. This is doubtless cor- 

 rect, but how will these possibilities be limited, and what is the 

 extent or range of the limit ? On both these points I venture to dis- 

 agree with the eminent men who have so ably discussed this ques- 

 tion. First, as regards the nature of the limit or barrier that will 

 stop our further progress in coal-getting. This is generally stated to 

 be the depth of the seams. The Royal Commissioners of 1870 base 

 their tables on the quantity of available coal in the visible and con- 

 cealed coal-fields upon the assumption that 4000 feet is the limit of 

 possible working. This limit is the same that was taken by Mr. Hall 

 ten years earlier. Mr. Hull, in the last edition of " The Coal Fields 

 of Great Britain," p. 326, referring to Prof essor Ramsay' s estimate, 

 says, " These estimates are drawn up for depths down to 4000 feet 



