Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/324

284 The fisheries are probably the richest in the world; and to-day the fishermen of the western coast are kept from death by starvation by American charitable subscriptions.

With regard to mines and minerals, this sentence from Mr. Carey, grandfather of Henry Carey Baird, of Philadelphia, will suffice: "There is probably not a country in the world, which, for its extent, is one half so abundantly supplied with the most precious minerals and fossils as Ireland."

"In Tyrone, Waterford, Cork, Down, Antrim, and throughout Connaught," says an eminent British authority, Mr. T. F. Henderson, writing a few years ago, "are immense stores of iron that remain unutilized." The same writer says that from what can be seen, Ireland has at least 180,000,000 tons of available coal, from which she raises yearly only 130,000 tons. Yet she imports over 3,000,000 tons yearly from England.

Ireland has 3,000,000 acres of bog-land, which supplies an enormous quantity of admirable fuel. The average depth of peat on this is twenty-five feet—in some cases over forty feet.

The following summary of Irish mineral treasures is made from official and other surveys and reports. The figures prefixed to the different minerals and fossils denote the number of counties in which they have been discovered:

A century ago, Mr. Lawson, an English miner, stated in evidence before the Irish House of Commons that the iron-stone at Arigna lay in beds of from three to twelve fathoms deep, and that it could be raised for two shillings and sixpence a ton, which was five shillings cheaper than in Cumberland; that the coal in the neighborhood was better than any in England, and could be raised for three shillings and sixpence a