606 Coal Exhausted. 



hideous heaps of slag, so suggestive of wealth, power, 

 culture, and prosperity, that disfigure South and North 

 Staffordshire, and all the other iron-making districts, 

 will in time crumble into soil, and, covered by grass 

 and trees, they will one day become beautiful features in 

 the landscape ; for man cannot permanently disfigure 

 nature. Even when this thing takes place will there 

 be any necessity for the country being reduced to abso- 

 lute poverty ? Our mountain lands, like the Schwarz- 

 wald, may be more woody than at present, and yield 

 supplies of fuel, the plains and tablelands more richly 

 cultivated, and who knows besides what motive powers 

 may by that time be economised other than those that 

 result from the direct application of artificial heat ? 

 Holland and the lowlands of Switzerland without coal 

 are two of the happiest and most prosperous countries 

 in Europe, and it appears as if Italy would follow in 

 their steps, but on a larger scale. In the far future, 

 Britain may still be prosperous, powerful, and happy, 

 even though all its coal be exhausted. 



Of late years a great deal of valuable iron ore has 

 been obtained from the top of the Lower Lias and from 

 the Marlstone of Yorkshire, and this tends still more 

 rapidly to exhaust our coal. The result has been the 

 rapid growth of the enterprising district and port of 

 Middlesborough on the Tees. At night the whole 

 country is aglow with iron furnaces, and the time may 

 arrive when the beautiful Oolitic valleys of North 

 Yorkshire will become a black country as smoky as 

 the Lancashire and Staffordshire coalfields. 



The Northampton Sands of the Oolites also yield 

 large quantities of silicious ironstone. It must not, 

 however, be supposed that ironstone is everywhere 

 plentiful in that formation, nor yet in the Marlstone, 



