Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/61

Rh that it can be set up and supplied with fuel at small cost, it will combine all desirable qualities, and will afford to the industrial arts a range the extent of which can scarcely be predicted. It is not merely that a powerful and convenient motor that can be procured and carried anywhere is substituted for the motors already in use, but that it causes rapid extension in the arts in which it is applied, and can even create entirely new arts.

The most signal service that the steam-engine has rendered to England is undoubtedly the revival of the working of the coal-mines, which had declined, and threatened to cease entirely, in consequence of the continually increasing difficulty of drainage, and of raising the coal. We should rank second the benefit to iron manufacture, both by the abundant supply of coal substituted for wood just when the latter had begun to grow scarce,