CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD. 353 



Excluding America, Great Britain takes the lead of the rest of the 

 world botli in its actual amount of coal and the extent of the coal 

 area as compared with the whole surface. With an area of 120,290 

 square miles, there are about 12,000 square miles of coal lands. 

 British America, however, in the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova 

 Scotia, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland, stands ahead of her in 

 both respects, its area of 81,113 square miles containing 15,000 or 

 18,000 square miles of coal land. The State of Pennsylvania leads 

 the world, its area of 43,960 square miles embracing 20,000 of coal 

 land. The Belgian coal fields (a portion of which extends into 

 France) are the most worked among the European. 



Eussia has a great area of Subcarboniferous rocks, containing 

 some little coal, but only small areas of the Coal measures, in its 

 southern part. 



In England (see the folio-wing map, in which the black areas are the Carboni- 

 ferous) the coal regions are situated in a band running north-northeast across 

 from South "Wales to the northeast coast, where is the Newcastle basin. The 

 principal regions are the South Wales, 600,000 square acres in area, and, in the 

 same latitude, the region about Bristol, east of the Severn; the small patches in 

 central England, in Worcestershire, Shropshire (Coalbrook Dale), "Warwickshire, 

 Leicestershire, and Staffordshire; north of these, the great Lancashire region, 

 which borders on Manchester and Liverpool, with the basin of Flintshire on the 

 Dee, the whole together over 500,000 square acres ; a little to the east, the York- 

 shire coal region, about Leeds and Sheffield, &50,000 square acres in area ; far- 

 ther north, a patch on the western coast in Cumberland, about "Whitehaven, etc. ; 

 and on the eastern coast, the great region of Newcastle, 500,000 square acres in 

 area. 



In Scotland the beds cover an area of about 2000 square miles, and lie 

 between the Grampian range on the north and the Lammermuirs on the 

 south. 



In Ireland there are several large coal regions, — that of Ulster, estimated at 

 500,000 square acres, of Connaught, 200,000, of Leinster (Kilkenny), 150,000, of 

 Munster, 1,000,000. 



The coal workings are carried on in most of the British mines by a regular 

 system of mining. The depth of one of the mines of the Newcastle coal field is 

 1500 feet; of another 1800; and of those of Yorkshire about 1000 feet. At 

 "Whitehaven they reach out far under the sea. 



The coal of England, Scotland, and Ireland is mainly bituminous or semi- 

 bituminous. Anthracite occurs in South Wales, especially its western part, 

 and also in the mines of southern Ireland (Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Clare) ; but 

 this variety is in general less hard and more inflammable than that of Penn- 

 sylvania. 



The associated rocks are similar to those of America, — viz., conglomerates, 

 sandstones, shales, limestones, and iron-ore beds; and fire-clays usually under- 

 lie each bed. Some deposits are evidently of fresh-water origin, others marine 

 or of brackish-water. 



24 



