SALTER — A CHRISTxMAS LECTURE ON COAL. 
13 
at Dungannon, and in Clare and Kilkenny ; but the beds are so poor 
in coal, and the produce altogether is so very small. It would 
almost seem as if Providence had made amends for the scanty sup- 
ply, and indicated the direction Ireland's industry should take, by 
covering her fertile limestone plains with the exhaustless peat. Peat 
is the Irishman's friend, and like the seal to the Greenlander, sup- 
phes him vdth Hght, warmth, and even building-materials ; and now 
they are manufacturing peat, it will be meat and diink to the Irish 
peasant. 
We have seen Jwiv coal is found, and ivliere in Britain ; how it Hes 
there in beds or basins, not in veins or bunches ; how it occurs 
mainly in the great Palaeozoic formation, above or about the geologic 
place of the Mountain Limestone. And this is true for nearly all 
of Europe, and of the mighty coal-fields of America. But it is not 
the case over the whole world. Even in our own country there are 
coal-beds in our oolite rocks, above even the ^^'ew Red Sandstone ; 
and in Yorkshire these rocks are neither few nor barren. 
This "oolitic" coal is the common coal of Virginia, in the United 
States. A similar coal fonns our staple supply in the East Indies. 
We have oolitic coal at Natal and along a great part of southern 
Africa. Australia is supplied with oolitic coal. Wherever English- 
men found a colony, there is coal ; but it is not all of the same age. 
Borneo is not yet ours, but there is coal. 
And there is tertiary coal. Our o^vn Httle coal-field at Bovey 
Tracej', Devonshire, is a minialTire representative of much larger 
brown-coal fields in Germany. The Miocene coal of the Rhine is 
little better than a fossil peat ; — sticks, and leaves, and fruits, and here 
and there an insect, a fish, a frog, are found in this freshwater coal. 
If a fox got dro^^^led in these old swamps, he, too, turns up as coal 
for German firesides. Nothing comes amiss. Some varieties of this 
tertiary coal are little else than pond confervfe matted close together, 
and layers of such like peaty matter form the dysoile, or " paper coal." 
So there is every transition in mineral composition from the peat 
bog to the coal-bed ; and it is not anticipating our next lecture to 
say that aU coal, of whatever kind or value, is vegetable produce. 
It would be out of place to doubt that our youngest readers know 
this fact ; what we propose to do next time is to give a short account 
of the methods of extracting these precious black diamonds ; to show 
what kinds of vegetables produced our great coal-fields ; and to dis- 
cuss briefly the valuable services we receive from " Coal." 
(To he continued.) 
