51 
and as preparations for sinking a shaft near the Park are 
being made, it may interest you to know the probable amount 
of potential energy" lying under its surface. The Haigh 
Moor and the deeper beds of coal are estimated to contain 
6,987,500 tons of coal ; and if this estimate be an approxi- 
mate value of the coal under the Park we must regard it as 
a vast magazine of power and wealth and of potential 
energy stored up in the bowels of the earth for the use and 
benefit of the inhabitants of Pontefract, and at a period of 
time immeasurably distant from our own. 
ESTIMATE OF TONS OF COAL UNDER THE PONTEFRACT PARK. 
Thickness Name Depth ■n^.,«,^'^+5^». Estimated pro- 
of of in 
Bed. Bed. yards. 
Ft. Ins. 
4 4 Haigh Moor 361 
Depth from H. M. to 
4 0 Middleton Main 200 
Depth from M. M. to 
2 0 BeestonCoal 90 
Depth from B. C. to 
2 4 Low Moor Black Bed 85 
DepthfromL. M.B.B. 
to Low Moor Better 
1 6 Bed 40 
DepthfromL. M.B. B. 
2 3 to Halifax Hard Coal 220 
Depth from H. H. C. 
1 6 to Halifax Soft Coal 20 
17 11 1,016 
100 Tons per Inch per Acre. 
21,500 Tons per Acre. 
325 Acres. 
of Coa Tons 
per Acre. 
Tons. 
First Class House Coal 5,200 
House, Gas and Engine Coal 4,800 
House and Engine Coal 2,400 
House and Engine Coal 2,800 
Best Smelting Coal 1,800 
House and Engine Coal 2,700 
House and Engine Coal 1,800 
Tons per Acre... 21,500 
Acres ... 325 
6,987,500 Tons under Park. Tons. . . 6,987,500 
I cannot but refer to George Stephenson, the railway 
engineer, whose philosophic mind, imaided by theoretical 
knowledge, rightly saw that coal was the embodiment of 
power originally derived from the sun. That small pencil of 
Bolar radiation which is arrested by our planet, and which 
