3o6 MINING. 



annual product. Japanese coal it is true, like all Eastern Asiatic 

 coal, is not, so far as is known, as good in quality as the English 

 and Rhine coal. In the judgment of those who understand its 

 qualities, among whom we must class machinists and stokers of 

 steam engines, it belongs to the family of fatty coals, which pro- 

 duce a great deal of smoke, blacken boilers, form clinkers, thus 

 hindering the draught, and cake very easily, without, however, 

 forming a good kind of coke. Lieut. Roberts, of the Perry ex- 

 pedition, for example, reports of them as follows : — 



" The coal which we got at Nagasaki was of fourth grade, and 

 poorer than the Australian and American coal furnished us in 

 Hongkong. It made a great deal of slag and dirty ashes, and 

 the fire required to be often stirred. We used 23 tons a day in 

 place of 18 tons of good English coal. The coal of Takashima 

 requires to be kept dry, as when wet it often fires spontaneously." 



Japanese coal in most places, if not everywhere, is tertiary coal, 

 and its origin of lacustrine formation. Its recent formation is 

 proved by the many leaf impressions of deciduous plants in the 

 shales accompanying it, but its properties and appearance are like 

 hard coal, and only in exceptional cases resemble those of 

 brown coal. 



This is true also of the coal from Diu, on Sachalin, which was 

 examined by the academician, F. Schmidt, of St. Petersburg, and 

 his companion von Glehn. A correspondent of " Export',' ^ after 

 enumerating, with this same unfavourable criticism, the pro- 

 perties of the fatty coal of Kelung on Formosa, writes : " As the 

 Japanese coal shows the same defects, the coal of Kelung may 

 compete with it in the markets of Eastern Asia. 



Together with such coal — for it is really bituminous coal, not- 

 withstanding its lack of age — may be found also many seams of 

 genuine brown coal in the neo-tertiary strata of Japan, although 

 they are generally thin. Several dozens of such weak seams are 

 often found one over another, separated by some intermediate 

 stratum. 



The north-western part of Kiushiu, with the provinces of Hizen, 

 Chikuzen, and Chikugo forms the richest coal district, although 

 Yezo boasts of numerous occurrences of coal. Lyman writes: "One 

 of the principal results of the geological survey of Yezo is the 

 recognition of the fact that on this island there are perhaps i5o,(X»o 

 million tons of workable coal, or two-thirds as much as the coal of 

 the same thickness in the celebrated coal fields of Great Britain. 

 The amount of coal on Yezo would put the island in position to 

 furnish the present annual production of Great Britain for nearly 

 1,000 years.^ 



The island of Yezo is not known to me by personal observation. 



^ Export^ VI. Jahrgang, No. 51, Berlin, 1885. 



2 Lyman : " Geological Survey of Hok-kai-do. General Report." Tokio, 1877, 

 pp. 106-7. 



