214 Coal in Canada. 



the depth of 150 feet, coal or something like it is found. Speci- 

 mens are now sent to a learned professor in Toronto, who damps 

 the ardour of the enthusiastic by assuring them, that it is only- 

 compact bitumen, like that often found in small quantities in the 

 " Utica shale" which is believed to be the rock of the locality, and 

 by giving a great many geological reasons why the occurrence of 

 coal there should be considered not absolutely impossible, but 

 contrary to all known facts. 



But the enterprise is not to be quashed in this summary man- 

 ner. The bore-hole is again appealed to, and now produces ac- 

 tual veritable coal, not only like coal and burning like coal, 

 but having all the characteristics of true coal-measure coal, and 

 showing its vegetable structures. The mineral is further stated to 

 be found under clay and sand having the aspect of the ordinary 

 tertiary clays and sands of Upper Canada, and showing none of 

 the characteristics of eoal measures either in mineral character or 

 fossils. These and other further statements render the reality of 

 the discovery still more improbable ; but gentlemen who cannot 

 distinguish ordinary calcareous clay from fire clay, who suppose 

 that fire clay often or ever forms the roof of coal seams, and who 

 believe that fetid exhalations and inflammable gases escaping from 

 wells are infallible indications of the presence of coal, are not 

 likely to be easily staggered by geological evidence. 



Accordingly their faith only becomes established by the growing 

 improbability, and we find them at the date of our latest informa- 

 tion sending a deputation to Toronto to solicit aid from the Gov- 

 ernment toward prosecuting the discovery, and their friends in 

 the newspaper press chuckling over the " nuts" which they have 

 given the geologists to crack. The one wise proposal which the 

 believers in this discovery make, is that the Director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey should be requested to examine the locality. This 

 however should have been done at the first. Sir W. E. Logan is 

 always ready to give any information in his power ; and is not 

 disposed, as his reports show, to treat with scepticism or contempt 

 any statement of a valuable discovery however improbable. In 

 the present state of the matter, it is hardly likely that anything he 

 will be able to state, on the evidence of surface indications, will 

 satisfy the public ; and a shaft may have to be sunk, at an expense 

 of several hundreds of pounds, to find out that there has been a 

 mistake or a fraud at the bottom of the matter instead of a seam 

 of coal. "We do not say that this will be the certain result ; there 



