THEIR ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE. 157 



limited scale.* In our own country some ancient crop- 

 workings, with stone hammers and hatchets still remaining, 

 date back perhaps to the Roman invasion, and " coal" is 

 mentioned in Saxon records of the ninth century; "but it 

 was not till the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the 

 value of the substance began to be fairly recognised. And 

 in connection with these facts it is a circumstance worth 

 noting, that no savage race has ever yet been discovered 

 that seemed to be aware of its nature and uses. It may 

 crop out along the ravines and sea-cliffs, as it does in 

 North America, in Eastern Africa, in Farther India, in 

 Australia and New Zealand, but the savage never bends 

 to dig while the twigs and branches around him can be 

 broken. The use of certain minerals and metals are, in 

 truth, as satisfactory tests of man's progress in civilisation 

 as the cultivation of certain plants or the domestication of 

 certain animals. The possession of the one may largely in- 

 crease his comforts ; a knowledge of the other invests him 

 with new and higher powers. 



As a nation we cannot exalt too highly the importance of 

 our coals and coal-fields. Our mechanical, manufacturing, 

 and commercial greatness is intimately bound up with their 

 existence ; and whatever tends to disseminate a knowledge 

 of their nature, to develop their resources, or economise 

 their products, is worthy of our encouragement and atten- 

 tion. Commercially, we may have no immediate interest 



* It is thus referred to by Theophrastus, a Greek author, who wrote 

 about 240 years B.C. : " Those fossile substances that are called Coals, 

 and are broken for use, are earthy ; they kindle, however, and burn 

 like wood coals. These are found in Liguria, where there also is amber, 

 and in Elis in the way to Olympias over the mountains. These are used 

 by the smiths. " Sir John Hill's Translation, 1774. The Ligurian coal 

 would appear, from its connection with amber, to have been lignitic; 

 the Olympian coal, now being worked by a modern company, is bitumin- 

 ous and of older date. 



