Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/762

746 —France has a large number of small detached coal basins. The basin of St. Étienne, in the department of Loire in S. E. France, has the largest annual production, about 3,500,000 tons; the basin of Valenciennes in the north, an extension into France of the coal field of Belgium, produces nearly as much, and that near Calais almost 3,000,000 tons. These and three or four others in S. E. France, each yielding about 1,000,000 tons per annum, produce the bulk of the coal of that country. The whole production of France in 1872 was 15,899,005 tons, and in 1873 about 17,500,000 tons. The annual production of anthracite is about 1,000,000 tons. The following tables give the most important statistics in regard to them, derived from the report of a late French parliamentary commission in 1874:

Germany is the largest coal-producing country in continental Europe. In 1872 the coal production of the empire was 42,324,466 tons, of which Prussia proper produced 36,973,411 tons; and there was a considerable increase in 1874. Less than one fourth of the whole product, 9,018,048 tons, is lignite or brown coal. The largest production was in the Rhine provinces, 11,500,000 tons; Silesia, 10,500,000; Westphalia, 10,000,000; and Saxony, 9,500,000. About two thirds (6,139,851 tons) of the brown coal comes from Saxony, where also about 3,000,000 tons of true or carboniferous coal is mined. Belgium is the next in rank as a coal-producing country, having mined 15,658,948 tons in 1872; the two principal districts are those of Liége and Hainaut. Austria mined 10,389,952 tons in 1872, more than half of which (5,676,672 tons) was brown coal. Nearly half of the whole product (5,098,080 tons) came from Bohemia, 1,500,000 from Hungary, and nearly as much from Styria. Nearly all the provinces produce both black and brown coal, or carboniferous coal and lignite. Russia has a large coal area, which like that of Scotland is subcarboniferous, or situated geologically below the formation in which the best coal of England and America is found. The only coal field of Russia belonging to the true coal formation is a small tract in Poland containing

80 sq. m., producing one third of the whole amount mined, which was 1,097,832 tons in 1872. Some good anthracite is reported near the sea of Azov, of which 331,896 tons were produced in 1872. Russia also produced in the same year 27,586 tons of lignite and 738,350 tons of bituminous coal. Spain has a good coal field of the carboniferous age, measuring 3,501 sq. m., but the production was only 570,000 tons in 1872. There is also coal in Portugal, the production in 1872 being 18,000 tons. The coal of New South Wales in Australia is believed to be true coal or carboniferous, not a lignite. The amount mined in 1873 was 942,510 tons, but the product does not increase rapidly, as it was 919,522 tons in 1869. The coal in Italy is lignite or later than the carboniferous age, as is also that of India, covering an area of 2,004 sq. m., and those of China, Japan, New Zealand, and South America, except some true coal in Brazil.

—The early history and development of coal is very obscure. It appears to have been used by the ancients only to a limited extent. Theophrastus, in his treatise on stones, mentions lithanthrax as used by the smiths of Elis. But the Romans, who excavated several of the ancient aqueducts of France through the coal measures, developing beds of coal, paid no attention to the mineral. The first notice we find in official records of the development of coal in England, the first country in which the mining of coal became a commercial industry, is the receipt of 12 cart loads of “fossil fuel” by the abbey of Peterborough in 850. But evidences exist to prove that coal was used to a very limited extent by the Britons before the Roman invasion; and the discovery of tools and coal cinders near the stations on the Roman wall, indicates that they must have learned its use from the Britons. The first evidence, however, of regular mining operations is found in the books of the bishop of Durham, by whom in 1180 several leases were granted for mining “pit coal,” a term since common among the English miners and writers on coal. The coal of Belgium appears to have been developed