302 MINERAL RESOURCES OP UNITED STATES. 
CHAPTER XXVIIL 
MINERAL RESOURCES OP THE UNITED STATES. 
General Remarks.— Coal. — Rhode Island Coal-fields. — Massa- 
chusetts Coal-fields. — Mansfield. — Anthracite Coal-fields of 
Pennsylvania.— Amount Produced and Consumed since the 
Mines first opened.— Bituminous Coal-fields of Pennsylvania, 
—Coal-fields of Maryland — Of Virginia — Of Ohio — Kentucky 
—Tennessee.— Other Coal Measures of the United States. 
The mineral resources of the United States but 
just begin to be appreciated. Hitherto we have 
been contented to cultivate the soil, and seek our 
iron, and coal, and copper, and lead, and other miner- 
al substances, from foreign countries ; but the time 
has at length arrived when the increasing wants of 
our rapidly multiplying population compel us to 
look for these materials nearer home. We shall 
endeavour, then, to give, in as short a compass as 
possible, an account of these resources, and, by 
statistical facts, show with what astonishing rapidity 
they are being developed. 
Coal. 
The coal strata have been observed as far north 
on this continent as human discovery has yet pen- 
etrated. At Melville Island, in latitude 75°, where 
the summer lasts but a few weeks. Captain Parry 
found in the coal formation an abundance of im- 
pressions and casts of plants which bore a tropical 
aspect ; and in Spitzbergen, which is still nearer the 
North Pole, there is also an extensive coal deposite 
with the same remains of fossil vegetables. 
As we come down the coast, the first coal-beds 
which we come to that are worked to any extent 
