IRISH MINERALS AND BUILDING STONES. 17 



IRISH MINERALS AND BUILDING STONES. 



It will be clear from the foregoing general description of the geology of 

 Ireland that the country depends largely for its coal supply upon outside 

 sources, notably on Scotland as regards the northern counties, and on Lan- 

 cashire as regards the centre and the south. The many schemes for utilis- 

 mg peat as fuel on a commercial scale have not met with much success, con- 

 fronted as they are by the nearness of the coalfields across the narrow 

 channel on the east. The absence of native coal in most districts has 

 checked the formation of industrial centres in Ireland ; and even the metallic 

 ores raised from time to time have been sent for smelting to Ayrshire or 

 South Wales. The attention of the working population has thus become 

 more and more directed to agriculture ; and the introduction of steam 

 machinery into almost every trade has still further emphasised the differ- 

 ence between the economic conditions that prevail in the Midlands of 

 Ireland and those of industrial England. This question, however, has 

 obviously two sides to it ; and a population compelled to seek prosperity 

 from the soil may perhaps be regarded as after all more for- 

 tunate than one which, year by year, becomes more closely crowded into 

 towns. The utilisation of water-power for the production of electricity, and 

 the employment of the electric furnace in metallurgy, may open new possi- 

 bilities for Ireland ; but at present her metallic ores remain in large part 

 unproductive, and her coal is raised somewhat sporadically, owing to the 

 readiness with which fuel can be imported from the richer seams in Britain. 

 It is obvious, however, that improved means of carriage from the mines 

 to the main lines of railway may do much towards 

 „ J promoting a local use of Irish coal. There have 



been, for the past few years, twenty-four mines at 

 work in the various coalfields, employing a total of 

 nearly one thousand persons. Professor Hull's estimate, in 1881, of the 

 "net tonnage available for use" in the Irish coalfields gave 182,280,000 

 tons of coal. About 125,000 tons are now raised annually, or little more 

 than the figure recorded twenty years ago. The output of Scotland, with 

 her rich coal-basins between Ayr and the Firth of Forth, is about 30,000,000 

 tons per annum, the amount having been nearly doubled in five-and-twenty 

 years. Like that of South Wales, the coal of Ireland is very largely anthra- 

 citic, that is to say, it is not a brightly burning coal. The northern coalfields 

 of Lough Allen and Eastern Tyrone produce, however, what is called bitu- 

 minous coal, and the same is true of the Hmited Ballycastle and Carrick- 

 macross areas. The great Kilkenny field, and all its southern companions, 

 produce anthracite alone. This type of coal in Ireland contains from 80 to 

 90 per cent of carbon, the ash being, in these extreme varieties respectively, 

 9.8 and 3.7 per cent. Sulphur is occasionally present in undesirable 

 quantity, but in other seams is practically absent. 



The Irish coalfields have been reported on fully by Sir R. Griffith, Sir 

 Robert Kane, and the officers of the Geological Survey, and offer, in most 

 cases, a field for patient exploration rather than for speculation. Thus the 



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