SALTER — A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL. 
61 
by £^ood ? management we contrive to get tliat enomious 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 Avhere 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 year. 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 fi'om about one thousand eight 
hundi-ed 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 mahes muskets, but does 
not msh to use them. 
Russia will scarcely tell us much about her coal-mines. She gets 
less than a miUion 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 colheries 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 
" "svimble." 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 Huut, suppHed me with these facts about om- coal 
consumption. 
