46 THE HARMONIES OF NATUEE. 



preserved from those extended fractures and crumblings and 

 falls, which would certainly be the consequence of largely mining 

 the best bituminous coal, were it aggregated into one vast mass. 

 In fact, by an evident exercise of forethought and benevolence in 

 the Great Author of all our blessings, our invaluable fuel has 

 been stored up for us in deposits the most compendious, the 

 most accessible, yet the least exhaustible, and has been 

 locally distributed into the most convenient situations. Our 

 coal-fields are so many Bituminous Banks, in which there 

 is abundance for an adequate currency, but against any sudden 

 run upon them nature has interposed numerous checks ; whole 

 reserves of the precious fuel are always locked up in the bank- 

 cellar under the invincible protection of ponderous stone-beds. 

 It is a striking fact, that in this nineteenth century, after so long 

 an inhabitation of the earth by man, if we take the quantities in 

 the broad view of the whole known coal-fields, so little coal has 

 been excavated, and that there remains an abundance for a very 

 remote posterity, even though our own best coal-fields may be 

 then worked out.' 



But it is not only in these inexhaustible supplies of mineral 

 fuel that we find proofs of divine foresight, all the other 

 treasures of the earth-rind equally convince us of the intimate 

 harmony between its structure and the wants of man. Com- 

 posed of a wonderful variety of earths and ores, it contains 

 in inexhaustible abundance all the substances he requires for 

 the attainment of a higher grade of civilisation. It is for his 

 use that iron, copper, lead, silver, tin, marble, gypsum, sulphur, 

 rock-salt, and a variety of other minerals and metals, have been 

 deposited in the veins and crevices, or in the mines and quarries, 

 of the subterranean world. It is for his benefit that, from the 

 decomposition of the solid rocks results that mixture of earths 

 and alkalies, of marl, lime, sand, or chalk, which is most favour- 

 able to agriculture. 



It is for him, finally, that, filtering through the entrails of the 

 earth, and dissolving salutary substances on their way, the ther- 

 mal springs gush forth laden with blessings and enriched with 

 treasures more inestimable than those the miner toils for. 



Supposing man had never been destined to live, we well may 

 ask why all those gifts of nature useless to all living beings but 

 to him why those vast coal-fields, those beds of iron ore, those 



