permit at times of a single ray
of sunshine permeating it. No one knows whence it rises, nor at what hour
to expect it. It is like a giant spectre which, having lain dormant since
the carboniferous age, has been raised into life and being at the call of
restless humanity; it is now punishing us for our prodigal use of the
wealth it left us, by clasping us in its deadly arms, cutting off our
brilliant sunshine, and necessitating the use in the daytime of
artificial light; inducing all kinds of bronchial and throat affections,
corroding telegraph and telephone wires, and weathering away the masonry
of public buildings.

The immense value to us of the coal-deposits which lie buried in such
profusion in the earth beneath us, can only be appreciated when we
consider the many uses to which coal has been put. We must remember, as
we watch the ever-extending railway ramifying the country in every
direction, that the first railway and the first locomotive ever built,
were those which were brought into being in 1814 by George Stephenson,
for the purpose of the carriage of coals from the Killingworth Colliery.
To the importance of coal in our manufactures, therefore, we owe the
subsequent development of steam locomotive power as the means of the
introduction of passenger traffic, and by the use of coal we are enabled
to travel from one end of the country to the other in a space of time
inconceivably small as compared with that occupied on the same journey in
the old coaching days. The increased rapidity with which our vessels
cross the wide ocean we owe to the use of coal; our mines are carried to
greater depths owing to the power our pumping-engines obtain from coal in
clearing the mines of water and in ensuring ventilation; the enormous
development of the iron trade only became possible with the increased
blast power obtained from the consumption of coal, and the very hulls and
engines of our steamships are made of this iron; our railroads and
engines are mostly of iron, and when we think of the extensive use of
iron utensils in every walk in life, we see how important becomes the
power we possess of obtaining the necessary fuel to feed the smelting
furnaces. Evaporation by the sun was at one time the sole means of
obtaining salt from seawater; now coal is used to boil the salt pans and
to purify the brine from the salt-mines in the triassic strata of
Cheshire. The extent to which gas is used for illuminating purposes
reminds us