8 TO THE DISCOYERY OF COAL. 



ditions, and amid such varied difficulties of acquisition, that 

 a right knowledge of geology can alone enable us to over- 

 come them. 



GEOLOGY APPLIED TO THE DISCOVERY or COAL. But 

 there is a mineral substance more precious than silver, or 

 even gold, the occurrence and profitable discovery of which 

 geology alone is able to determine, and that substance is 

 coal. If the mines of the precious metals were closed to- 

 morrow, and gold and silver no longer raised for the use of 

 man, society, with some very considerable revolution and 

 difficulty in the mode of adopting other representatives of 

 value, would go on nearly as before ; but deprive civilised 

 communities of their coal, and how fatal would be such a 

 catastrophe to the welfare and happiness of the human race ! 

 No longer would our favoured country be the great factory 

 of the world ; no longer would our commerce convey the 

 associate benefits of knowledge and civilisation to the 

 remotest regions of the globe ; no longer should we triumph 

 over time and space, and traverse land and ocean with 

 a rapidity almost incredible ; our steam-power would be 

 annihilated, and with it our prosperity and supremacy as a 

 nation ; and the future historian of the revolutions of em- 

 pires would date the decline and fall of Britain's power from 

 the period when her supply of mineral fuel was exhausted, 

 and her last coal-field consumed ! 



Such are some of the most important benefits connected 

 with the discovery and the use of mineral fuel. The utility 

 of geology consists not only in pointing out those situations 

 in which coal may be presumed to exist, but in determining 

 those in which it cannot possibly occur ; for while the limits 

 of the coal-producing districts have been largely and bene- 

 ficially extended, by means of researches undertaken in 

 accordance with scientific views, enterprises have been com- 

 menced by persons ill-informed on the subject, which, having 

 been conceived in ignorance and carried on in opposition to 

 sound geological principles, have terminated in utter failure 

 and disappointment. Some few years only have elapsed since 

 the deceptive appearance of lignite, in strata appertaining to 

 the wealden formation, at Bexhill, in Sussex, induced certain 

 parties, imperfectly acquainted with geological science, to 

 institute a search for coal ; it was not till after works of the 



