394 Reviews—R. Meade—The Coal and Iron Industries. 
«The phyllades form beds of a schisto-compact texture, usually 
susceptible of yielding folia of a large size, and of thus dividing in 
a way almost indefinable into pieces of extreme tenuity. They are 
often more glossy than the ordinary schists, harder, offer more 
resistance to atmospheric influences, and eventually break up into 
an unctuous earth which does not make paste with water: their 
prevailing colours are bluish-grey, and greenish. In France the 
phyllade passes into slate.” W. Ha Es 
VI.—Tue Coat anp Iron Inpusrries oF THE Untrep Kinepom. By 
Rrcwarp Mzaps, Assistant Keeper of Mining Records. pp. xxi. and 
876, with two maps. (London: Crosby Lockwood & Co., 1882.) 
HIS is an important work, “comprising a description of the coal- 
fields, and of the principal seams of coal, with returns of their 
produce and its distribution, and analyses of special varieties: also 
an account of the occurrence of iron ores in veins or seams ; analyses 
of each variety; and a history of the rise and progress of pig iron 
manufacture since the year 1740, exhibiting the economies introduced 
in the blast furnaces for its production and improvement.” We have 
here noted the continuation of the title, which forms in itself a brief 
table of contents: the volume, as will be evident, attaining a portly 
size, equal in fact to that of Portlock’s Geological Report on London- 
derry, etc. Mr. Meade must have laboured long and most indus- 
triously at his task, while his many years’ service in the Mining 
Record Office at Jermyn Street (now disestablished and merged with 
that at the Home Office) has given him exceptionally good opportu- 
nities of acquiring information on all matters relating to Mining; 
hence the work is one of great authority and merit. 
The author plunges at once into his subject, not burdening his 
volume with any introductory matter on the origin and geological 
position of coal, or kindred topics, that are discussed in geological 
manuals. Chapter I. opens with an account of the Durham and 
Northumberland Coal-field. Its early history, and its extent, exposed 
and concealed, are first sketched out. And it is interesting to learn 
that as early as the year a.p. 852 there is a record of the Abbey of 
Peterboro’ receiving twelve cart-loads of the pit coal. Details of the ~ 
strata, descriptions of the various kinds of coal, and some analyses of 
them, are then given. The celebrated “ Wallsend” coal (we are 
told) was for a long period of years produced from the High Main 
Coal of the Tyne, the colliery from which it was produced being at 
Wallsend, and hence the origin of this designation to distinguish the 
“Best Household Fire Coal,” after the original Wallsend coal of the 
Tyne had been worked out. As might be expected, the volume is rich 
in statistics, and we learn that while in the year 1602 the vend of 
coal from Newcastle amounted to 190,000 tons; in 1880 the total 
return of coal raised for the year in the Durham and Northumberland 
Coal-field, amounted to 34,913,508 tons! The enormous increase is 
shown to follow the extension of the canal system, the introduction 
of gas, the application of steam, the demand for iron, and the 
