e see that this mineral
is being consumed as fuel, for the production of coke, for the manufacture
of gas, and in many other ways. Lavishly as Nature has provided us with
this source of power and wealth, the idea naturally suggests itself
whether we are not drawing too liberally upon our capital. The question of
coal supply crops up from time to time, and the public mind is
periodically agitated about the prospects of its continuance. How long we
have been draining our coal resources it is difficult to ascertain. There
is some evidence that coal-mining was carried on during the Roman
occupation. In the reign of Richard I. there is distinct evidence of coal
having been dug in the diocese of Durham. The oldest charters take us back
to the early part of the thirteenth century for Scotland, and to the year
1239 for England, when King Henry III. granted a right of sale to the
townsmen of Newcastle. With respect to the metropolis, Bishop Watson, on
the authority of Anderson's _History of Commerce_, states that coal was
introduced as fuel at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In these
early days, when it was brought from the north by ships, it was known as
"sea-coal":--

"Go; and we'll have a posset for 't soon at night, in faith, at the
latter end of a sea-coal fire."--_Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act I.,
Sc. iv.

That the fuel was received at first with disfavour appears from the fact
that in the reign of Edward I. the nobility and gentry made a complaint to
the king objecting to its use, on the ground of its being a public
nuisance. By the middle of the seventeenth century the use of coal was
becoming more general in London, chiefly owing to the scarcity of wood;
and its effects upon the atmosphere of the town will be inferred from a
proclamation issued in the reign of Elizabeth, prohibiting its use during
the sitting of Parliament, for fear of injuring the health of the knights
of the shire. About 1649 the citizens again petitioned Parliament against
the use of this fuel on account of the stench; and about the beginning of
that century "the nice dames of London would not come into any house or
roome when sea-coales were burned, nor willingly eat of meat that was
either sod or roasted with sea-coale fire" (_Stow's Annals_).

For many centuries therefore we have been drawing upon our coal supplies,
and using up the mineral at an increasing rate. According to a recent
estimate by Professor Hull, from the b