The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-01 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, I'HUIISDAY EVENING, MARC_ 1, 1860.

(4.ENERAL ADVERTISING AGENCY
OFFICE. —J. W. VICKERS (for upwards of fourteen
years with the late Mr. C. Barker, of Birchin-lane), respect-
fully informs his friends, and the advertising public gene-
rally, that he has commenced business on his own account at
No. 2, Cowper's-court, Cornhill, E.C. (adjoining the Jerusa-
lem Coffee House), where all commissions entrusted to his
care will be executed with accuracy and despatch.
The London and Provincial journals regularly filed.
March 1, 1860.

BURROWS AND CO., Wholesale Wine Mer-
chants, LIVERPOOL.
tores - Lime-street.
Offices 54, Duke-street.
• The Proprietors beg most respectfully to call the attention
of the trade, noblemen, clergy, ke., and the public in general,
to their extensive stock of Choice Wines, of rare vintages.
BURROWS and Co. are not disposed to comment .ulion the
purity of their wines, which is daily most laudably acknow-
ledged by.the public and eminent medical Men.of all coun-
tries, as the increasing patronage of
,the highest families in
the land is a sufficient guarantee.
They beg to call particular attention to their
„pure Tonic
Wines, as being so valuable to Invalids and persons of weak
stomachs.
A sample case, containing three- ull-sized wine bottles,
will be forwarded to any address on-receipt of P. 0.0. for 6s.
6d., or a dozen for 245.
.It is a well-known fact that impure and adulterated wines
are the greatest foes to health, producing acidity in: the
stomach, and debilitating the digestive organs, while pure
wines will accelerate the digestive powers, invigorating,.
strengthening, and bracing the nervous system. r
Their Tonic Wine is admitted to be most essential -to in-
valids„both old and young, and should never be absent from
the homes of the weak and sickly. Its Properties are .duly
acknoWledged and appreciated by the reading men of the
faculty, both at home and abroad.-
• To prevent imposition each bottle is sealed with the name
of the firm.
All orders to be made payable to HENRY BURROWS.

QURE CURE. --LAMBERT'S ASTHMATIC
BALSAM, without confining the bowels or affecting the
head:truly efficacious and pleasant, Is admitted to bstlie.bcst
medicine for immediAtely relieving coughs, colds • coufirined'
?aces of astlimit and consumption. It frequbialeetfiltir irftd
sons whom the falsity pronounce incurable, admirably al ays
the tickling which ptovekes frequent coughing. In approach-
ing consumption its effects are truly beneficial. Persons de-
prived of sleep, or even 'yin: down for fear of suffocation,
may depend on relief in a few minutes after taking it. Pre-
pared only and sold by W. Lambert, chemist, 20, Jermyn-
street, Haymarket, and by all druggists, in bottles, 134 d.,
2s. 3d. and 4s. 6d. each. Be particular and ask for Lambert's
Asthmatic Balsam. 'William Lambert, 20, Jermyu-street is
engraved on the stamp.

miles long, but no.one could tell how far Nyassa
extended. ►lt lad a heaq swell on it, though there
was no wind. It bathes .a country where cotton is
now largely cultivated: One sowing of foreign
cotton seed (got by the natives themselves from the
sea coast up the Shire) serves for three years' crops."

THE COAL SUPPLY.

A .writer in a contemporary says :—As the extent
of England's coal resources is an object of consider-
able interest at the present moment, perhaps the
following statement of facts and inferences may be
useful to remove unnecessary alarm, to suggest pru-
dence in the management of so important an element
of our eountry's greatness, and at the same time to
justify .our public men in permitting our neigh-
bours to take a fair share of our mineral riches in
return for thaw' productions which the climate of
the Continent and the ingenuity and industry of its
people enable them to offer us in exchange.
.There are in England nine distinct tracts of
country where those rocks come to the surface which
are knoWn to yiehl coal. These districts are called
coalfields; the smallest of them includei more than
60,000,. and the larger more than 600,000 acres of
coal lands, under the greater part of which coal has
been, is, or may be, worked to profit. Scotland
contains another. million acres of such coal lands.
Besides tnese tracts, marked in, our geological
maps, there are others
:exceedingly large but less
clearly-made out, in which coal is also to be got,
although the coal7bearing beds:are covered up with
accutnulations .of newer -rockS. Ail these will be
available when the price of'coal justifies the outlay
1114 ii I Iwo iisavalved iii wag 14QJJI.
The best known and largest ot our coalfields are
the Newcastle and Durham, the Lancashire, the
Yorkshire, the South Staffordshire and Warwick-
shire, and the South Welsh. The ascertained acre-
age of coal in these amounts to about 21 millions.
Adding to this the million of acres in Scotland, and
half a million for the smaller areas, we have a total
of four millions of acres, or in round numbers,
6,000 square miles of coal lands in the British
islands.

In none of these districts are there less than ten,
while in some there are more than 70 beds of coal
known and described, each capable of yielding coal
to profit by the ordinary process of mining. Some
of these beds are between one and two feet, most of
them between three and seven, and one between 30
and 40 feet thick. Rarely more than a small num-
ber of scams or beds of coal can be obtained with
advantage from the same area, but the average
thickness of workable coal may with safety be taken
as not less than lo feet, or five yards, over the whole
area of any coalfield.

Now, a.; an acre contains 4,840 square yards, and
a cubic yard of solid coal weighs nearly one ton, there
thus appears to be 24,200 tons of coal per acre of
large part is
coal lands on a general average, but as a large
quantity of coal in every coalfield is, from various,
llost
causes,by not obtainable, oobtdtaitilnaarbylmen,odaendofaotxiotit.haoetrion,
we
cannot
calculate on niore than one-third of this, say 8,000
tons per acre, as the quantity that can be removed
and sold. This would give about 5,000,000 tons of
coal for every square mile of coal lands.
The annual consumption of coal at present in
England cannot be less 80,000,000 tons, so that we
are now exhausting about 1G square miles of our
coal lands each year. Estimating the area of coal
lands at 6,000 square miles this would give a dura-
tion of rather more than 350 years.
It may be observed that the usual estimate of
coal lands in England is 12,000 square miles, and
that in the smaller area I have taken an allowance
is made for the unproductive portions.
The coal area in Belgium and Rhenish Prussia
together is not more than one-eighth part, and in
all France not one-fifth part that of England and
Scotland; the average thickness of coal is smaller,
and the position of those coals' is generally less
favourable in the former district for extraction, and
in the latter for transport to the sea.
The quantity of coal known to exist in North
America, both in the United States and British
possessions, is so large that for all practicable pur-
poses it may be regarded us inexhaustible. Coal is
also abundant in India, China, Borneo, Eastern
Australia, and South Africa.

Owing to the advanced position of England in
practical mining operations and the facility and
economy with which she can place hex large sup-
plies in the markets of the world, at a cost so low
at present as to exclude competition, hey coal will
no doubt be extracted very rapidly for years to
come. But should the advancing industry of other
countries reduce the price below tharat which
profit is secured by our colliers, or should the cost
of extraction increase with us out of proportion to
the rest of the world, the demand for exportation
would be at once checked, and the drain upon our
resources would diminish.

That this mmthappen very long before any ap-
proach to exhaustion could be experienced may be re-
garded as certain, and it must be remembered that
the price of iron (for the manufacture of which at
least half our coal is required) will to a large ex-
tent act as a regulator, and prevent a too rapid
extraction when the first symptoms of exhaustion
are felt.

It is clear, then, that, like all other articles of
commerce, the trade in coal may safely be left to
arrange itself, and will do so with the greatest cer-
tainty of benefit to all parties, both now and cen-
turies hence, by being left to its natural growth,
restrained only by those checks which nature has
imposed.