Price per Bushel. .077 • ⚫ .074 .072 Pittsburg, .119 .119 .119 .154 Description. 3 sorts used. One-third cannel. 3 sorts used cannel [a 16s. Derbyshire soft coal $1,447 Which gives an average of over eleven cents per bushel. If we take the average of coal, equal in quality to Pittsburgh, the average price at the great manufacturing cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, is from fourteen to fifteen cents per bushel. Twenty-six bushels and twenty-four pounds of our coal make a ton. I give twenty-six and a half bushels to the ton. The respective weights per cubic feet are: Liverpool, Newcastle, do. do. Newcastle. 78.89 78.54 78.37 79.54 according to Prof. Johnson's report. The advantage of the calculation, therefore, is against us. And yet, in ignorance of the facts, many of our men of capital and enterprise doubt whether we can enter into competition with English manufactures, because of the cheapness of English coal! "THICKNESS AND DEFTH OF THE COAL SEAMS.-South Wales.-The beds have been worked 2,100 feet below the surface, although generally it has not been found necessary to go deeper than 480 feet. There are twelve seams between three and five feet; eleven from eighteen inches to three feet, and several, which are not worked, from twelve to eighteen inches thick. “Whitehaven.—The Howgill mine is 600 feet below the bed of the sea, and carried 3,000 feet from the shore. "Dunham-The most important colliery is the Montagu, three and a half miles above Newcastle. Of this, the Benwell main is four feet nine inches thickthree hundred and five feet deep. The Beaumont seam three feet four inches thick-four hundred and nine feet deep. Low main two feet eleven inches thicktwo hundred and twenty-three feet deep. Low low main two feet ten inches thick— eight hundred and eighty-two feet deep. Of the superincumbent mass, three hundred and one feet is Whinstone and post; the first of which is so hard that angular fragments will cut glass; the latter is a hard kind of freestone suitable for grindstones. "Cumberland.-King's Pit,' near Whitehaven; one seam is twelve feet thick-seven hundred and twenty-six feet deep. Two seams two feet thick nine hundred feet deep. Three seams six feet one inch thick-one thousand two hundred and ninety-three feet deep. "Ashby.—At a depth of four hundred and seventy-five feet, five beds of dif ferent qualities are worked, averaging about three feet in thickness. cc Sheffield. The principal seams worked near Sheffield are: 1. Seam four feet thick-depth not stated. 2. Seam two feet three inches thick, and seventy-eight below the first. 3. Seam three feet nine inches thick-one hundred and ninetyeight feet below the first. 4. Seam four feet six inches thick-four hundred and ninety-eight feet below the first. 5. Seam five feet thick-one thousand and ninety-eight feet deep. 6. Seam six feet thick-depth not stated. Of these, the second seam is largely worked, and known as furnace coal. The third has seven lamina of different qualities. The fourth is, in working, separated into eight layers, the lowest portion being Cannel coal, and used exclusively in the Sheffield gas works. The fifth, or manor seam,' has fifteen layers, including two of soil. The sixth, or Sheffield bed,' has six or eight varieties, some abounding in iron pyrites. “Northumberland.-The shallowest pit is one hundred and thirty-eight feet deep, and the lowest twelve hundred and eighty feet perpendicular; of which the shaft alone cost about $350,000. "At Monkwearmouthshire, the boring commenced in 1826, and had reached, in 1835, as low as fifteen hundred and ninety feet, passing through but a single available seam, at a depth of fifteen hundred and seventy-eight feet; and, indeed, none other was looked for under eighteen hundred feet deep. In working this shaft about $500,000 had been expended! "In the Alfred' pit, at Jarrow, there is.a thirty horse steam engine, erected at a depth of seventy-eight feet below the surface, and used in raising the coals up a shaft which unites with the workings carried out two hundred and seventy feet deeper still. At this profound depth, another engine draws the coals up an inclined plane that lies coincident with the dip of the strata. "At the Swan Banks' colliery, near Halifax, the hard band' coal seam two feet three inches thick, is four hundred and forty-two feet deep, and the 'soft bed' coal one foot five inches thick, is worked eight hundred and twelve feet below the surface. "The foregoing are about the average value of the coal beds in England. The thickest seam is that called the Ten-Yard Vein,' near Dudley. This, however, as is the case in all very thick beds, is difficult to work. The coal is tender, the roof is not firm, and only about one-third of the coal can be taken out. Besides, thus far, no machinery has been found in detaching blocks of coal from the mass. Where the ordinary pick is insufficient, gunpowder is used, and, wherever this is required, Davy's safety lamp would be superfluous. The seams worked at the least expense, are from five to eight feet thick. Of the average depth and thickness of the coal in England, I have no precise data. It is safe, however, to esti mate the depth at between six hundred and seven hundred feet, and the thickness from three to three and a half feet. The cost of reaching and working these mines is enormous; cheap labor and capital only could sustain it. Where else but in England would a capitalist persevere for nine years, and expend half a million of dollars without any return, on the judgment of a 'coal viewer' or geologist? C "The labor and cost of raising the coal from such depths is but slight when compared with that required to drain and ventilate the mines. Drainage is sometimes effected by adits' or drifts. The Cornish adit, for example, extends its ramifications about 26,000 fathoms, and empties into Falmouth harbor. The adit of the Duke of Bridgewater's mines, at Worsley, is a prodigious work, about thirty miles long, and navigable for barges. But, generally, the water is taken from the mines by the use of the steam engine. For this purpose the South Hetton colliery has three engines of one hundred horse power each, and one of three hundred horse power; of the latter, the beam contains eighty-one thousand eight hundred and forty pounds of iron, makes fifteen strokes per minute, and raises eight hundred pounds of water at each stroke. The cost of this engine was £10,000. And yet coal mines are often inundated, and sometimes thereby rendered useless. "The process of ventilating the mines is complicated and costly, and so imperfect that the mines are never entirely safe from the deadly effects of the fire and choke damp. After the awful tragedies at the Pitt mines, it seems strange that man should risk a similar catastrophe, but, in England, life is as cheap as capital or labor. "I cannot, without extending this paper to a great length, enumerate even all the important obstacles in the way of the English collier, but cannot omit reference to dikes.' C "Dikes,' says Mr. Coneybeare, are an endless source of difficulty and expense to the coal owner, throwing the seams out of their level [at Clackmanshire 1,230 feet] and filling the mines with water and fire damp.' And yet, Prof. Buckland thanks God for so placing these faults; for, without them,' says he, the mines could not be drained by the powers of the most approved machinery.' · C "The statesmen of England attribute her great prosperity and power to her coal fields, and Parliaments have anxiously inquired of the surveyor and geolist whether the supply would last two or three thousand years longer. They may, in time, hear of our vast beds of the same mineral, of superior purity, without a 'fault;' which is found by drifts and not shafts; which require no artificial means of drainage or ventilation; in whose veins life is safe and labor not irksome; and which underlies a soil of unsurpassed fertility; and they may remember the fate of Thebes, Athens, and Rome, and reflect that no amount of capital, no preponderance of power can long sustain a city or State when competing with superior natural advantages elsewhere. "Nova Scotia.-The Albion mines are in Pictou, on the northern side of Nova Scotia, and eight and a half miles distant from the town of the same name. The coal is transported the whole distance by railroad, or by the river barges. The strata are similar to those of Staffordshire. The Sydney and Bridgeport mines are on the eastern side of the island of Cape Breton. The coal in this field is similar in quality to that at Newcastle. Railroads are required here, and also steam 'tugs' to tow coal vessels in and out of the harbors. The shallowest pit described is one hundred and eighty feet deep; as the dip of the veins is rapid and towards the sea, the workings will continually increase in depth. The seams, perhaps, are not as thick as those of England, and, judging from the price at which the coal is sold in New England, the cost of working them is not less. "Martin, in his 'Colonial Library,' states that all these mines are held by the General Mining Association' as tenants of the crown and the late Duke of York, with a capital of $2,000,000, chiefly invested in boats, machinery, and other means of carrying on its mining operations. The nearest and only great market for this coal is New England, where its price ranges from twenty to thirty cents per bushel, after paying an import duty of about forty-five cents per ton. Before I touch on the coal measures of the United States, I must ask space to make a few quotations from various writers on the importance and value of this mineral. "It cannot here be necessary to point out the many advantages which we derive from the possession of our coal mines, the sources of greater riches than ever issued from the mines of Peru, or from the diamond grounds at the base of the Neela Mulla mountains. But for our command of fuel, the inventions of Watt and Arkwright would have been of small account; our iron mines must long since have ceased to be worked, and nearly every important branch of manufacture which we now possess must have been rendered impracticable, or, at best, have been conduceed upon a comparatively insignificant scale.'-Porter's Progress of the Nation. "The ascent of Mount Blanc from Chamouni is considered, and with justice, as the most toilsome feat that a strong man can execute in two days. The combustion of two pounds of coal would place him on the summit.'—Sir J. F. W. Hershel. "The amount of work now done by machinery, moved by steam, in England has been supposed to be equivalent to that of between three and four hundred millions of men by direct labor.' "Dr. Thompson says that in the coal fields on the north and northwest of Birmingham, the loss in mining, owing to the tender nature of the substance itself, and the comparatively trifling demand for small coal, amounts to about two-thirds of he entire steam. In allusion to this statement, and the efforts of a celebrated philosopher to economize the application of fuel, Mr. Tredgold exclaims: "The waste, which Count Rumford lamented so much, dwindles to nothing in comparison with the wholesale destruction of a valuable material. Are you a manufac turer? Look around and see what generates the power which enables you to compete with other nations. Are you a philanthropist? Consider that a substance is destroyed which would add comfort to millions of your fellow creatures; consider the risk at which it is procured; the number of lives that are lost by explosions, and the misery these catastrophes create. Surely, some means of rendering that portion useful, which is now wasted, may be devised” "In a work, lately published by a Spaniard, there is a comparison between the produce of the gold and silver mines in America and the coal mines of England, in which the author exhibits a balance in favor of the latter of no less than 229,500,000 francs annually.' Pennsylvania realizes from her coal mines an annual income of four and a half millions, and Great Britain of one hundred and ninety-two millions of dollars.' -Hitchcock's Geology, Mass. 1841. << My last quotation is from the splendid speech of Mr. Webster. "It [steam] is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose on his oars; it is in the highways, and begins to exert itself along the courses of land conveyances; it is at the bottom of mines, a thousand (he might have said 1,800) feet below the earth's surface; it is in the mill, and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it weaves, it spins, it prints." 666 The writer says of the great Illinois coal field, that "in the opinion of geologists, the whole field is what is termed a basin,' and, on the Ohio, is lowest about Henderson. Probably there are only two strata that are worth working. The the upper at lower, in geological position, is seen at Cannelton and Trade Water; Bon Harbor; each of these, at different points, is from 3 to 10 feet in thickness. On the eastern side the dip is westwardly about fifty feet in a mile; on the western side the dip is estwardly, but how rapid is not known. Near the Mississippi river the lower strata is said to be very sulphurious. 66 66 The positions where it has been worked, and where the coal appears to be of an excellent quality and convenient thickness, are at Cannelton, and on the Wabash and White rivers, in Indiana; about one hundred miles up the Green river, at Bon Harbor, and on the Tradewater river, in Kentucky; and on the Saline and Big Muddy rivers in Illinois." ART. VII-HOPS. THE CULTIVATION OF HOPS IN THE WEST. THE QUANTITY CONSUMED IN ST. LOUIS. We have bestowed much labor in ascertaining the quantity of hops consumed by the breweries in St. Louis, and have learned from the proprietors of these establishments that they purchased last year, 71,700 pounds. We have not been able to ascertain the quar tity used by the bakers, distillers, &c., but we imagine --- |
