v.] ON THE .FORMATION OF COAL. 109 



out of her workshop, who by degrees acquired sufficient 

 wits to make a fire, and then to discover that the black 

 rock would burn. 



I suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when 

 Julius Caesar was good enough to deal with Britain as 

 we have dealt with New Zealand, the primaeval Briton, 

 blue with cold and woad, may have known that the 

 strange black stone, of which he found lumps here and 

 there in his wanderings, would burn, and so help to warm 

 his body and cook his food. Saxori, Dane, and Norman 

 swarmed into the land. The English people grew into a 

 powerful nation, and Nature still waited for a full return 

 of the capital she had invested in the ancient club- 

 mosses. The eighteenth century arrived, and with ,it 

 James Watt. The brain of that man was the spore out 

 of which was developed the steam-engine, and all the 

 prodigious trees and branches of modern industry which 

 have grown out of this. But coal is as much an essential 

 condition of this growth and development as carbonic 

 acid is for that of a club-moss./ Wanting coal, we 

 could not have smelted the iron needed to make our 

 engines, nor have worked our engines when we had 

 got them. But take away the engines, and the great 

 cowns of Yorkshire and Lancashire vanish like a dream. 

 Manufactures give place to agriculture and pasture, and 

 not ten men can live where now ten thousand are amply 

 supported. 



Thus, all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid 

 life is Nature s interest upon her investment in club- 

 mosses, and the like, so long ago. But what becomes of 

 the coal which is burnt in yielding this interest ? Heat 

 comes out of it, light comes out of it, and if we could 

 gather together all that goes up the chimney ; and all 

 that remains in the grate of a thoroughly-burnt coal-fire, 

 we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity of 



