275 



purposes, than it had been in its original state. Mr. Kifwatt, how- 

 ever, who will not allow that the Kilkenny coal has suffered any 

 change by the action of fire, justly observes, " Would not bitumen 

 be found in the neighbourhood of those beds of coal from which it 

 had been expelled ? Would not the sulphur also be distilled from 

 the pyrites found in the coal ? Yet neither in the coal mines of 

 Kilkenny, the coal of which is, of all others, most completely des- 

 titute of bituminous matter, nor any where near them, is the least 

 trace of bitumen to be found ; and the pyrites remain in their 

 usual integrity/' 



Every endeavour to account for the formation of this mineral 

 carbon, meets with considerable difficulties ; neither the Neptunian 

 nor the Plutonian system appearing, in the present state of our 

 knowledge, to be sufficient, separately, to explain the circum- 

 stances attending the production of this substance. 



As to the operation of fire, it must be admitted, that the com- 

 bustion of a vein of coal might take place, under such circumstances 

 of prohibition of the access of atmospheric air, as might, most pro- 

 bably, secure the reduction of the coal to a char. The probability 

 of the Kilkenny coal having been thus formed, derives some aug- 

 mentation from the spontaneous, as well as accidental, burnings 

 of strata of coal, which, even of late years, have been noticed, as 

 having occured in several parts of the world. Thus Cambden speaks 

 of a coal mine in Newcastle, which was burning for several years ; 

 and according to the account of Mr. Jefferson, who wrote in the 

 year 1787, a bed of coal at Pittsburg, in North America, was then 

 burning, and had been on fire since the year 1765*. Another coal- 

 hill, on the pike-run of Monongahela, had then been burning ten 

 years, and had burned away about twenty yards only. The Abbe" 

 Raynal also relates, that a vein of coal was set on fire at Cape 

 Breton, which burned with great fury. 



* Jefferson's State of Virginia, p. 43. 



