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In point of utility, and as a vast reservoir of power, coal takes the 

 lead amongst minerals which aid development. Its energy is a fraction 

 of the solar heat and light diffused on the tree ferns and giant tropical 

 growth of the carboniferous era, ages before man, which is again partly 

 restored in combustion. Wherever coal exists, there is, or will be, de- 

 velopment, and to its presence is due the existnce of many a great 

 industrial town. Take the Lowlands of Scotland and the manufactur- 

 ing districts of England for an example. France, Belgium and part of 

 Germany ai-e hives of industry overlying coal fields, and a network of 

 railways binding them together, aids in developing manufactures of all 

 kinds, with ever increasing success. 



The coal deposits of America, and their associated iron, have 

 covered the Eastern States with factories and railways, and yet the 

 «tory is told, that scarce one hundred years have elapsel since a 

 wandering hunter in Pennsylvania built a fireplace of stones in a lonely 

 valley, and was astonished to see his hearth taking fire from the burn- 

 ing brushwood. That was the first discovery of the great Appalachian 

 coal field, and, if I mistake not, our own fellow-townsman, Professor 

 Macoun, in his wandering over the prairies in search of his favorite 

 plants, near Crowfoot, accidentally found, much in the same way, what 

 are now the coal mines of the Saskatchewan district in our Northwest. 

 As long as coal maintains the preeminence as the source of power, the 

 nations owning coal regions must maintain a supremacy. As in the 

 course of centuries the supply fails in the countries now producing it, 

 so the seat of commerce will change to where coal has yet been unde- 

 veloped, and the land of the Celestials (China), whose coal deposits are 

 said even to cast America into the shade, will and must become the 

 centre of commerce. Then civilization will have traversed the globe to 

 recommence in the East. 



Petroleum, accidentally discovered whilst boring for brine, to the 

 intense disgust of the borer, has to a wonderful degree developed many 

 large and important towns; but a rival treads hard on its heels, and 

 before liquid fuel has displaced the solid it is itself threatened by gas. 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana are using gas where petroleum and 

 coal formerly maintained the sway. Iron is melted, glass manufactured, 

 and steam raised for factories, towns lighted, and houses heated by 



