2^5 
purposes, than it had been in its original state. Mr. Kirwan, however, 
who will not allow that the Kilkenny coal has suffered any change 
by the action of fire, justly observes, “ Would not bitumen be found 
in the neighbourhood of those beds of coal from which it had been 
expelled ? Would not the sulphur also be distilled from the pyrites 
found in the coal ? Yet neither in the coal mines of Kilkenny, the 
coal of which is, of all others, most completely destitute of bitu- 
minous matter, nor any where near them, is the least trace of bitumen 
to be found ; and the pyrites remain in their usual integrity.” 
Every endeavour to account for the formation of this mineral 
carbon, meets with considerable difficulties ; neither the Neptunian 
nor the Plutonian system appearing, in the present state of our 
knowledge, to be sufficient, separately, to explain the circumstances 
attending the production of this substance. 
As to the operation of fire, it must be admitted, that the com- 
bustion of a vein of coal might take place, under such circumstances 
of prohibition of the access of atmospheric air, as might, most pro- 
bably, secure the reduction’ of the coal to a char. The probability 
of the Kilkenny coal having been thus formed, derives some aug- 
mentation from the spontaneous, as well as accidental, burnings 
of strata of coal, which, even of late years, have been noticed, as 
having occurred in several parts of the world. Thus Cambden speaks 
of a coal mine in Newcastle, which was burning for several years ; 
and according to the account of Mr. Jefferson, who wrote in the 
year 1 ^ 8 ^, a bed of coal at Pittsburg, in North America, was then 
burning, and had been on fire since the year 1/65^. Another coal- 
hill on the pike-run of Monongahela, had then been burning ten 
years, and had burned away about twenty yards only. The Abbe 
Raynal also relates, that a vein of coal was set on fire at Cape 
Breton, which burned with great fury. 
* Jefferson’s State of Virginia, p. 4.S. 
