38 GEOLOGICAL SITUATIONS OF COMMON COAL 



borne in mind, and applied, should occasion arise, without the 

 necessity of any scientific knowledge of chemistry being ac- 

 quired. This may in some degree be true, but it is far more 

 probable, as the experience of many will testify, that if they 

 are learned merely as insulated facts, unconnected with a de- 

 finite system of similar facts, they will not be remembered. 

 While, on the other hand, a person who has acquired an out- 

 line of the leading facts of chemical science, cannot fail to 

 be prepared to meet the necessity we have supposed. It 

 would only be a portion of his system of knowledge, that 

 oxalic acid might be distinguished from Epsom salts by observ- 

 ing its action upon chalk ; and another portion of that system, 

 that the same substance is an antidote to the poison. A per- 

 son unacquainted with chemistry might readily forget these 

 facts ; while to the mind of one who had been instructed in 

 that science, they would always be present and always avail- 

 able on necessity. 



The foregoing are a few among many cases that might be 

 cited, of the utility of natural knowledge in the preservation 

 of human life. We will now direct our attention to some of 

 those concerns which involve the acquisition and preservation 

 of the means of life ; in trade and the sale of natural property, 

 in commerce, and in war. 



Vast sums of money have been expended in our own coun- 

 try and in others, and great disappointment and chagrin ex- 

 cited, by fruitless endeavours to discover mineral coal in 

 situations where even a superficial knowledge of the structure 

 of the earth's crust, as explained by Geologists, would have 

 shown it could not possibly occur. Many of the strata of stone, 

 of clay, and of sand, constituting the geological formations 

 which appear to be of comparatively recent origin, occasionally 

 include substances externally resembling coal, derived from 

 vegetable matter by the agency of water and of chemical affi- 

 nities, modified by compression and the contact of earthy bo- 

 dies. The accidental discovery or exposure of these, has 

 led to the supposition that they were connected with beds of 

 true coal, such as those of Newcastle or of Staffordshire, ex- 

 isting still deeper in the earth ; and the immense utility of that 

 mineral, together with the value it confers upon estates from 

 which it can be raised, and the importance it gives to the sur- 

 rounding country, have induced the proprietors of the land to 

 commence expensive, and sometimes ruinous operations in 

 search of it. A few thin beds of some of the imperfect car- 

 bonaceous substances I have mentioned, or of slaty clay con- 

 taining bituminous matter, have occasionally been met with, in 

 the progress of these searches ; and being, as at first, con- 



