Geology in Education and Practical Life. 447 



thick on the ground as it was in the densest spots indicated on the 

 older map, while at the same time the standards of wages, living, 

 and comfort, instead of decreasing, have increased. 



The discovery of this new source of energy, coal, immediately 

 gave employment to a much larger number of people ; it paid for 

 their food and provided the means of transporting it from the-utter- 

 most parts of the earth. Under agricultural conditions the map 

 shows that the population attained a given maximum density, and 

 no further increase was possible, the density being regulated by the 

 food supply raised on the surface of the land. Our dwelling-house 

 was but one story high. Under industrial conditions our mineral 

 resources can support five times the number. Our dwelling-house 

 is of five stories — one above ground and four below it. 



At the same time the type of distribution is altered. The 

 agricultural areas are now covered by a relatively scanty population 

 and the dense areas are situated on or near to the coal and iron 

 fields, the regions yielding other metals, those suitable for industries 

 which consume large supplies of fuel, and a host of new distributing 

 centres, nodal points on the new lines of traffic, either inside the 

 country or on its margins where the great routes of ocean transport 

 converge, or where the sea penetrates far in towards the industrial 

 regions. 



It has been the good fortune of this country to be the first to 

 idealise, and with characteristic energy to take advantage of, the new 

 possibilities for development opened up by the discovery and 

 utilisation of its mineral wealth. We were exceedingly fortunate 

 in having so much of this wealth at hand, easy to get and work 

 from geological considerations, cheap to transport and export from 

 geographical considerations. So we were able to pay cash for the 

 products of the whole world, to handle, manufacture, and transport 

 them, and thus to become the traders and carriers of the world. 



But other nations are waking up. We have no monopoly of 

 underground wealth, and day by day we are feeling the competition 

 of their awakening strength. Can we carry on the struggle and 

 maintain the lead we have gained ? 



In answering this question there are three great considerations to 

 keep in mind. First, our own mineral wealth is unexhausted ; 

 secondly, that of our colonies is as yet almost untouched ; and 

 thirdly, there are still many uncolonised areas left in the world. 



The very plenty of our coal and iron, and the ease of extracting 

 it, has been an economic clanger. There has been waste in 

 exploration because of ignorance of the structure and position of the 

 coal-yielding rocks ; waste in extraction because of defective 

 appliances, of the working only of the best-paying seams and areas, 

 of the water difiSculty, and the want of well-kept plans and records 

 of areas worked and unworked ; waste in employment because of 

 the low efficiency of the machinery which turns this energy into 

 work. With all this waste our coalfields have hardly yielded 

 a miserable one per cent, of the energy which the coal actually 

 possesses when in situ. 



