77 
but which as often were given up as worthless and hopeless. The 
coal obtained was frequently tried upon steamers, and at one time 
found to be excellent material at another utterly unfit for use; 
the enterprise, however, stopped at these few isolated experiments, 
and a regulated persevering working of mines was nowhere under- 
taken despite the general urging demand for fuel, 1 and despite 
the extravagant prices, which serviceable coal would have commanded 
(£ 2 to 3 per ton). The reasons for such neglect are to be sought 
partly in the considerable working expences, partly in the scarcity 
of labourers and of the means for conveying the coal; but chiefly in 
the nature of the coal obtained — brown coal — , the inferior quality 
of which, being totally different from the English coal, did not suit 
the consumers. The closer investigations of the last years, however, 
have proved that upon North and South Islands coals greatly vary- 
ing in quality, and of very different geological ages, are to be found 
in beds extending over large areas, and well worth a regular sys- 
teme of mining. It is not only lignite, of a comparatively inferior 
value that is known, but also thick beds of excellent brown coal 
of a tertiary (cainozoic) age, which comes up to the best German 
brown coal; and moreover coal of a probably secondary (mesozoic) 
age, — resembling the Australian coal, — which in quality is 
scarcely second to the best English coal. 2 
1 Despite the immense forests covering the interior of the country serious 
complaints have been made in Auckland for years past about the high price of fire- 
wood, likewise in Christchurch. In the latter place there has been even a “Coal 
and Fire-wood Society'* 1 established, a company got up for the purpose of providing 
the labouring classes with fuel at the lowest possible prices. All these grievances 
will be thoroughly disposed of by a regulated working of the rich coal-fields in the 
various districts of the country. — Auckland is said to consume at present annually 
coal to the amount of £30,000. The quantity of coal imported into New Zealand 
in 1865 was 86,172 tons, the value £150,160. 
2 In New Zealand no coal seams have yet been discovered that can be re- 
ferred to Palaeozoic coal measures, such as occur in the Northern Hemisphere, as 
all the formations, which contain workable seams, belong to the mesozoic or cainozoic 
epochs. Dr. J. Hector in his able Report on the Coal Deposits of New Zealand 
(1866) has adopted a provisional classification of the New Zealand coals into two 
groups, under the terms Hydrous and Anhydrous Coal , or, those which still contain 
a large percentage of water chemically combined with them, and those which we 
may assume have been deprived of that water by a chemical change. The hydrous 
