462 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 458. 



geological considerations, cheap to trans- 

 port and export from geographical con- 

 siderations. 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 com- 

 petition 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 unex- 

 hausted; secondly, that of our colonies is 

 as yet almost untouched ; and tliirdly, there 

 are still many uneolonized areas left in the 

 world. 



The very plenty of our coal and iron, 

 and the ease of extracting it, has been an 

 economic danger. There has been waste in 

 exploration because of ignorance of the 

 structure and position of the coal-yielding 

 rocks; waste in extraction because of de- 

 fective appliances, of the working only of 

 the best-paying seams and areas, of the 

 water difficulty, and the want of well-kept 

 plans and records of areas worked and un- 

 worked; waste in employment because of 

 the low efficiency of the machinery which 

 turns this energy into work. With all this 

 waste our coal fields have hardly yielded a 

 miserable one per cent, of the energy which 

 the coal actually possesses when in situ. 



Engineers and miners are trying to 

 diminish two of these sources of waste, 

 and geology has done something to reduce 

 that of exploration. This has been done 

 by detailed mapping and study, so that we 

 now know the areas covered by the coal- 

 seams, their varying thickness, the 'wants,' 

 folds and faults by which they are 

 traversed, and all that great group of 



characters designated a.s the geological 

 structure of the coal fields. It could not 

 have been accomplished unless unproduc- 

 tive as well as productive areas had been 

 studied, the margins of the fields mapped 

 as well as their interiors, and luiless the 

 geological principles wrested from all sorts 

 of rocks and regions had been available for 

 application to the coal districts in question. 

 We no longer imagine every gray shale to 

 be an index of coal ; we are not frightened 

 by every roll or fault we meet with under- 

 ground; nor do we, as in the past, throw 

 away vast sums of mone.y in sinking for 

 coal in Cambrian or Silurian rocks. 



We can not afford, hard bitten as we are 

 in the rough school of experience and with 

 our increased knowledge, to make, all the 

 old mistakes over again, and yet we are 

 on the very eve of doing it. Up to the 

 present it is our visible coal fields that we 

 have been working, and we have got to 

 know their extent and character fairly well. 

 But so much coal has now been raised, so 

 much wasted in extraction, and so many 

 areas rendered dangerous or impossible to 

 work, that we can not shut our eyes to the 

 grave fact that these visible fields are 

 rapidly approaching exhaustion. The 

 government has done well to take stock 

 again of our coal supply and to make a 

 really serious attempt by means of a royal 

 commission to gauge its extent and dura- 

 tion ; and we all look forward to that com- 

 mission to direct attention to this serious 

 waste and to the possibility of better 

 economy which will result from the fuller 

 application of scientific method to explora- 

 tion, working and employment. 



But Ave stiU have an area of concealed 

 coal fields left, possibly at least as large 

 and productive as those already explored 

 and as full of hope for increased industrial 

 development. It is to these we must now 

 turn attention with a view of obtaining 



