The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-04 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, Thursday.

The Queen went out in the grounds yesterday
morning, accompanied by Princess Helena and
Prince Arthur, and drove out in the afternoon with
Princess Helena.

Lord Alfred Paget and Colonel the Hon. A. Hare
dinge have succeeded Major General the Hon. A.
Hood and Lieut.-Colonel Du Plat as Equerries in
Waiting.

RETURN OF THE QUEEN TO WINDSOR
WINDSOR. CASTLE, Thursday.

The Queen, accompanied by their Royal High-
nesses Princess Helena, Princess Louise, Prince
Leopold, and Princess Beatrice, left Osborne to-
day at a quarter-past two, and arrived at Windsor
Castle a quarter before six o'clock.
The suite in attendance consisted of Lady
Churchill, Lady Augusta Stanley, the Hon. Emily
Cathcart, Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey, Lord
Alfred Paget, Col. the Hon. A. Hardinge, Sir Jas.
Clark, Lieut. Stirling, Mr. Sahl, and the Master of
the Household.

His Royal Highness Prince Arthur, attended by
Major Elphinstone, left Osborne this morning for
Greenwich Park.

Lord de Tabley and Lieut.-General Sir H. Ben-
thick have arrived at the Castle as Lord and Groom
in Waiting.
The Hon. Florence Seymour has also arrived as
Maid of Honour.

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, accompanied
by Prince Alfred, and attended by Viscountess
Walden, Lieut.-General Knollys, Major Teesdale,
and the Hon. E. Yorke, visited the Royal Academy
yesterday afternoon.
The Prince of Wales afterwards went to the
House of Lords.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, accompanied
by Prince Alfred, went to the Royal Italian Opera
in the evening.
Prince Alfred, attended by the Hon. E. Yorke,
arrived at Marlborough House on Wednesday even-
iLg from the Continent.

FRAN CE.

PARIS, Thursday, 4.20 p.m.

CORPS LEGISLATIF.

To-day, at the commencement of the sitting, M.
Rouher, the Minister of State, said that the policy
of the French Government was essentially pa-
cific ; that her sincere desire was to hold
aloof from the conflicts of other countries ;
that the French Government would see with in-
finite displeasure and regret Austria attack Italy.
Such an attack would be very serious to the
French policy, but that if Italy were to commence
hostilities against Austria, France would abandon
her to the chances of that adventure.

M. Thiers (who is now speaking) is entering into
a long statement of the German policy,

It is believed that M. Rouher will speak again at
he close of the debate.
French Rentes 65f. sc.

The American Coal Fields.

Mr. HUME BURNLEY, in a report sent to the
Foreign Office on the coal-fields of America, informs
us that the whole extent of the coal area in the
United States has been usually divided into four
principal coal-fields or tracts, viz. :—The Great
Central, Alleghanian or Appalachian coal-fields,
extending from Tuscaloosa in Alabama, through
Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, Western Vir-
ginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and re-
appearing in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
This field has been computed to cover within the
United States an area of 50,000 or 60,000 square
miles, of which about 40,000 square miles, or
25,600,000 acres, are considered workable area.
It is subdivided into eight minor divisions produc-
tive of hitinninous cool Thp
.+....•-
pies the greater part of Illinois and Indiana, and in
extent is nearly equal to the first. A third field
covers a large portion of Missouri, and the fourth
the greater part of the State of Michigan. The
Chesterfield bituminous coal-field, a detached dis-
trict of small area near Richmond, Virginia, con-
tains the oldest-worked collieries in America, and
for many years furnished the only supply of coal
for the seaboard towns. The greater part of the
area of workable coal in the bituminous coal-fields
above-mentioned remains as yet undeveloped. The
detached basins of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania,
which form one of the most interesting of this great
coal-producing territory, though limited in aggre-
gate area, as yet produce considerably more than
all the others put together.
The coal area of the United States, according to
Taylor's " Statistics on Coal," a work published in
1855, was estimated in 1845 to cover 133,132
square miles, or 85,204,480 acres, which was nearly
one-fourth of the total area of the twelve States
in which the coal formation lay. It was equiva-
lent to nearly three-fourths of the coal areas of the
principal coal-producing countries of the world.
Of this area 8,397 square miles were to the west
side of the Missouri River, and 124,372 square
miles east of the Mississippi River, whilst 437
square miles were occupied by the anthracite de-
posits of Pennsylvania. More recent estimates
(from the report of the Commissioners of the
General Land Office) have made the American coal-
fields, so far as they have been developed, to cover
nearly 20,000 square miles. The coal areas of Great
Britain and Ireland, by far the most productive in
the world, are estimated to cover about 1'2,000
square miles, or one-tenth the entire area of the
kingdom. The coal formations of British America
are computed to have an area of 18,000 square
miles.

Iu 1845 the production of the British coal-fields
was set down at 31,500,000 tons annually. The
product of 1858 was stated to be upwards of
65,000,000 tons, worth at the pit's mouth
£16,700,000, and in 1863, according to the
Philadelphia Board of Trade, quoting from British
official sources, 86,292,215 tons, valued at
£20,572,945. An eminent geologist estimates the
average thickness of the workable coal in Great
Britain at 35 feet, and the total quantity of work-
able coal at 190,000,000,000 tons. If the whole area
of the productive coal-fields of North America be
taken at 200,000 square miles, and the average
thickness at 20 feet, Mr. KENNEDY calculates that
their product will be 4,000,000,000,000 tons. The
relative size of the coal-measure of the United
States and other countries has been made more ap-
preciable by taking the amount of workable coal in
Belgium as 1, then that of the British Islands
becomes rather more than 5, that of all Europe
84, and that of North America 111. Professor
ROGERS, in a work on the coal-fields of the United
States as compared with those of Europe, calculates
that the United States has 1 square mile of coal-
field to every 15 square miles of territory ; Great
Britain, 1 to every 30 of surface ; Belgium, 1 to
every 22i- ; and France, 1 to every 200 miles of
surface. The relative superficial magnitude, he
observes, of the coal-fields of the countries posses-
sing coal will be recognised if we compare them by
some simple unit of measure. Let this be 100
square miles. In this case—Russia will be repre-
sented by 1 ; Spain, 2 ; anthracite fields of Penn-
sylvania, 4 ; Westphalia and Bohemia, 4 ; Belgium,
b ; France, 10 ; Rhenish Prussia, 10 ; British
Provinces of North America, 17 ; British Islands,
40 • Europe, 75 ; Pennsylvania, 126 ; Appalachian
coal-field, 556 ; the entire coal-fields of the United
States, 2,200. Whichever way the foregoing
figures are taken, they clearly represent the enor-
mous coal-producing power of North America and
the vast wealth of mineral possessed by that
country.