SALTER — A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL. 



61 



by Qfood ? management we contrive to get that enormous quantity 

 annually from them. On an average coal fetches nine shillings a ton. 

 So that here is thirty million pounds sterling, and more. Besides we 

 raise four million tons of iron. Each costs about a penny a mile per ton 

 carriage by the railway. And where carts are used, a shilling a mile 

 per ton must be paid for them.* Coal and Iron together would pay 

 two -thirds of our taxes for the year ! 



America is richer in coal than we are ; she has twelve times as 

 many square miles of coal-beds. But her forests are yet so extensive, 

 that she does not — including British America — find it necessary to 

 raise above seven millions of tons a y ear. This is scarcely so much as 

 France gets from her scanty coal seams. All honour to her genius 

 and industry (would they were always employed in arts of peace) ; 

 she gets seven and a half millions from about one thousand eight 

 hundred square miles of coal. But what shall we say of little Belgium, 

 which raises eight millions out of her five hundred square miles ! 

 Belgium has plenty of iron too, and she makes muskets, but does 

 not wish to use them. 



Russia will scarcely tell us much about her coal-mines. She gets 

 less than a million tons per annum ! Austria is almost equally poor; 

 and the whole of Germany does not raise much above five millions. 



England has very nearly three thousand collieries in profitable 

 work, and four government inspectors to see that they are safely 

 handled. 



As the beds in a coal basin, though regular, are often much broken, 

 it is usual to bore the ground before commencing the operations for 

 extracting it. The boring apparatus is very simple. It consists of a 

 gigantic gimlet, which from its weight also acts as a chopper or a 

 chisel. It is made of iron, tipped with steel ; and of joints which 

 screw together as they are successively pushed down — the point 

 being either a cork-screw or scoop for soft strata, clay, &c, or a 

 chisel for harder rock. The principal instrument in use is called a 

 " wimble." It consists of a steel cylinder, or rather a plate of steel 

 rolled round into a cylindrical shape, but so that the edges over- 

 lap a little ; and it is found that this curled-up plate, with a square 

 notch cut out of the sharp- edged end, is about the best form for the 

 double work of chiselling the stratum and bringing up the fragments. 

 Then there is a scoop for mud called a sludger ; and a great many 

 varieties which may be screwed on to the end of the rod. But the 

 main end and object of all, is to cut the beds through, one after 

 the other, and bring up such fragments to the surface as shall show 

 the nature of the ground through which the rod passes. The instru- 

 ment is worked by four men when the depth is not very great ; but 

 horse or even steam-power must be used in deep borings ; and the 

 work is very expensive, since the rod must be continually drawn up 

 and the fragments removed. For eight hundred feet down they can 

 tell very accurately what beds they are passing through. 



* My friend, Mr. Robert Hunt, supplied me with these facts about our coal 

 consumption. 



