ON THE EXHAUSTION OF OUE COAL. 
301 
Northumberland, are now being made in Belgium, and the 
same country is now supplying engineers in London with such 
ornamental castings as they require, because, I am informed, 
the designs and the castings are better, and, beyond all, they 
are cheaper than they can be obtained from the English 
founders. Locomotive engines for English railways are being 
made in France, and, the great iron ship-building yards of the 
Seine and Marseilles are seriously entering into competition 
with our own. During the last six years, immense quantities of 
railway iron have been made to supply the requirements of the 
world. This demand is gradually subsiding, the simple cause 
being that there is a lull in the railway atmosphere, the 
current of speculation is running less rapidly, and the ex- 
tension of lines of iron road is more gradual than it was. 
Did space admit of it, it could be shown that on every side 
there are evidences of the most decided character which 
warrant the supposition, that the annual exhaustion of our 
coal-fields will not at any period much exceed the 100,000,000 
tons, which it has nearly reached. 
The price of coal has been, and is, steadily increasing, and it 
must continue to do so. Our mines are worked at a greater 
depth from the surface than formerly, and the workings are 
every day extending further from the shafts, through which 
the coal is raised to the surface. Many of our large collieries 
draw an acre of coal, several feet thick, through one shaft, to the 
surface, every week. The cost of obtaining the coal is therefore 
steadily increasing. With an increase of price, a more general 
economy in the use of coal will arise. A rise of two or three 
shillings a ton on coal in London will lessen the brilliancy of 
the parlour fire, and check the waste in the kitchen, of many 
a household. Many of our large manufactories use 500,000 
tons of coal a year : increase ' the cost by a few shillings the 
ton, and the same quantity of heat will be obtained by more 
careful stoking, from a less quantity of coal. As an example 
of this, the pumping-engines of the coal districts are worked 
with coal costing five or six shillings the ton ; the pumping- 
engines of Cornwall are worked with coal costing fifteen or 
sixteen shillings the ton. Yet the Cornish engines perform a 
higher duty than the colliery engines do, and at less cost, 
because coal is wasted in the one case and economized in the 
other. In the colliery districts, boilers are exposed to every 
wind that blows, and all the rain which falls ; in Cornwall 
they are not only housed, but they are most carefully clothed, 
to prevent any loss of heat. The increase of price which is 
going on , is the natural chech upon any greatly increased con- 
sumption of coal. 
I think it cannot but be understood, that the writer of this 
