15G 
EARLY HISTORY. 
there is lio instance on record of its employ¬ 
ment amongst barbarian tribes. 
The notices of its early history as fuel are 
extremely scanty. Three passages in the 
sacred Scriptures have been quoted to prove 
that it was not unknown in the days of Job 
and the prophets.* The arguments in 
favour of the hypothesisis that fossil fuel is 
thus referred to, are based not on transla¬ 
tion, but on the force of the expressions 
used, and cannot be considered as establish¬ 
ing more than a possibility. 
Theophrastus (B.C. 285) is quoted to 
shew its employment by the smiths in 
ancient Greece; the forge was apparently 
its sole consumer in the infancv of its use, 
and until comparatively modern days. 
In this Island the etymology of the word 
is the most powerful argument that the sub¬ 
stance was known to the Ancient Britons. 
The discovery of cinders under a Roman 
way, and in ruins of the Romano-British 
period, attest its occasional employment by 
the artizans of that transition state of 
* Job xli. 21; 2 Samuel xxii. O, 13; Psalm xviii. 8; quoted in 
Dr. Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopaedia, Art. “Coal." 
