SALTER — A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL. 
7 
tlie question was simply this, " Wliat is coal ?" We are not going to 
try to give a definition ; but if we can sliow our young readers (and 
there are, we hope, a good many of them) a few of the facts connected 
with the structure, contents, mode of formation, &c., of a coal-field, 
perhaps we may be able to answer the formidable query, " What is 
coal ?" without calhng in the aid of counsel, and our fee is — one 
shilling. As this is a Christmas lecture for our young friends, we 
hope our senior readers will not take it amiss if elementary phrases 
are introduced, and a few woodcuts given to illustrate what they 
know very well.* And perhaps we may be allowed to speak in the 
first person singular ; it is more conversational. 
Fii'st, then, Avhere is coal found, and how ? Of course we all know 
it is a mineral substance, bedded deep in the bowels of Old Mother 
Earth. And I need not tell most of you that Old England has more 
of it than any other European nation ; that she is much dependent 
on it for all her industry ; that it has helped to make her peaceful 
conquests over half the world. And some of you may perhaps know 
that she is now so tired of using it in this way, that she is going to 
make a present of one-half of it to her dear friend France — for pur- 
poses of war ! 
A glance at some of the places celebrated for coal will perhaps be 
the best way to learn the mode of its occui-rence. Let us take for 
instance a place where they send our best coals from, but where it is 
no use to send coals to. The Newcastle district is perhaps, all things 
considered, the richest in England. The river Tyne, rising, as many 
decent rivers do, in the pure air of the Che\'iots, waters all the central 
parts of Northumberland, and enters the sea at Tynemouth, with far 
less unsullied purity than it left the mountains \dih.. It is saying 
much for the traffic on its banks, that the Tyne is nearly as black as 
the Thames before it reaches the sea. This trafiic is wholly in coal. 
The Tyne cuts its way through the very heart of the coal-field ; 
the flourishing towns of Hexham, Gateshead, and Newcastle being 
some of those which dot its banks, while Tynemouth and Shields are 
the grand ports for its black produce. Get out your map of Eng- 
land if you please, as we shall have further occasion to refer to it. 
And now I think of it, the little map, coloured by Sir Roderick Mur- 
chison, and published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
Knowledge, is the best we can have, for it has both map and geology 
all in one.t 
Well, we are on the banks of Tyne, looking at the never-ending 
chimneys and coal-engines. The river is full of collier-brigs ; and at 
the ports there are the long high jetties for embarking coal, and the 
blazing coke-heaps on the wharves, for the black diamond is not only 
life but hght to Newcastle. 
* And it must be understood that we are not going over again the same ground 
which Prof. Buckman took in the first volume of this work. He was showing 
us how to search for coal, tlds is for those who know very Httle about it. 
t Stanford's, Charing Cross. Price 5s. 
