34 Original Articles. [Jan., 



pabulum on which the giant feeds, and steam the fluid which circu- 

 lates through his veins. It is believed that in 1863 our coal produce 

 did not fall short of ninety millions of tons; that is, the freight of one 

 hundred and eighty thousand ships, each carrying five hundred tons, 

 or nearly five hundred such ships daily, or upwards of twenty every 

 hour throughout the day and night. The importance of this enor- 

 mous mass of fuel will, perhaps, be best estimated from the fact that 

 it contained a mechanical power equal to upwards of thirteen years' 

 labour, under the most favourable conditions, of thirty millions of 

 able-bodied men — a number exceeding that of the entire population 

 of the British Islands when the census was last taken. 



These are among the salient facts connected with the situation 

 and structure of our country, on which the position which she occupies 

 amongst the nations largely depends. Britain is an island of de- 

 sirable dimensions, rich in the amount and variety of her mineral 

 wealth, and occupying the centre of what may be called the terrestrial 

 hemisphere of the earth. She is well supplied with roadsteads, har- 

 bours, and navigable rivers, — is placed within the temperate zone, in 

 the northern hemisphere, and on the eastern side of the Atlantic 

 Ocean. It should be remarked that each of the above facts is inde- 

 pendent of all the others. Centrality, for example, by no means 

 necessarily secures a maritime situation, or insularity, or desirable 

 dimensions, or mineral wealth, or harbours, or rivers, or a particular 

 hemisphere, zone, or ocean, or the direction of genial ocean currents. 

 Each is the result of geological operations of incalculable antiquity. 

 The sea is constantly encroaching on the land in some places, and 

 retreating from it in others ; and though such changes are in a life- 

 time appreciable by the initiated observer only, time alone is required 

 to give them a Value greater than any that can be assigned. The 

 relative level of land and sea is by no means characterized by stability ; 

 for example, Sweden has long been undergoing a slow and gradual 

 upheaval, and Western Greenland has been slowly sinking. A com- 

 paratively small elevation of Western Europe would deprive Britain 

 of its insularity. Within its own borders many once-famous harbours 

 have been completely silted up. The elevation of an island or the 

 formation of a coral-reef between Florida and Cuba would rob us of 

 the Gulf Stream. 



Geologists tell us that in times geologically very recent, though 

 humanly somewhat remote, our country underwent changes almost 

 surpassing popular belief. They say that within our area the era imme- 

 diately prior to the advent of man was so intensely cold, as to be appro- 

 priately termed " Glacial ;" that this divided itself into three periods, of 

 which the first and third were " continental," that is, the whole of the 

 British area stood, at least, from five hundred to six hundred feet 

 higher than now, so that the German Ocean and British Channels were 

 left dry. The higher mountains of Wales and of Scotland were then 

 occupied with glaciers. The second or intermediate period was one 

 of submergence, by which, at least, the land north of the Thames and 

 Bristol Channel, as well as that of Ireland, was carried down certainly 

 fourteen hundred, and probably two thousand three hundred, feet below 



