But there is still another story of coal tar to be told. Among the many curious substances that wonderful fluid contains is the beautiful wax-like body called paraffine, the development of which chiefly owes its origin to the genius and energy of Mr. James Young. As early as 1848, Mr. Young had worked a small petroleum spring in a coal mine in Derbyshire, and had produced oils suitable for burning and lubricating purposes, but the spring gave out, and then Mr. Young sought to obtain these oils by distilling coal. After many trials, in conjunction with other gentlemen connected therewith, he proved successful, and the present magnitude of this industry is without parallel in the history of British manufactures.
In Scotland alone there are about sixty paraffine oil works, one alone occupying a site of nearly forty acres. Here about 120,000 gallons of crude oil are produced weekly, and among the various works in Scotland about 800,000 tons of shale are distilled per annum, producing nearly 30,000,000 gallons of crude oil, from which about 12,000,000 gallons of refined burning oil are obtained in addition to the large quantities of naphtha, solid paraffine, ammonia, and other chemical products. Twenty-five years ago scarcely a dozen persons had seen this paraffine, and now it is turned out by the ton, fashioned into candles delicately tinted with colors obtained from coal tar.
I might dwell on this subject until it becomes wearisome to you, therefore I will not trespass too much on your time. But from every point we look we reach this fact, that our coal trade is one which develops itself according to laws that we are perfectly powerless to control; if it seems to promise a less rapid increase here, it is only that it may spread abroad with accelerated vigor elsewhere; if it is our slave in some aspects, it seems as if it were our master in others.
Finally, we have to ask, What of our export coals? Rapid as has been the growth of our total production during the last twenty-three years, the growth of our export of coals has been greater still. Beginning at 4,300,000 tons in '54, we find it reaching 16,250,000 tons in '76, and an increase at a corresponding ratio up to the present date as far as statistics will carry us. At such a rate of increase it would seem as if our whole annual production would be ultimately swallowed up in our exports, and it is not, perhaps, impossible that after we have ceased to be to any great extent a manufacturing people, a certain export trade in coal may still continue. Just the same as the export trade in coal preceded by centuries our own uses for it other than domestic, so may it also survive these by a period as prolonged. If our descent from our present favored position be a gradual one, much may be done in the interval to adapt ourselves to the future outcome, but it is certain that nothing will be done except under the stern persuasion of necessity.
When our coal fields become exhausted, be it soon or late, he would be a wise or, perhaps, a rash speculator who fixed himself to a year or a generation. Being inevitable, the best philosophy is to make our decline more gradual and less bitter. Sentimental regrets that these hills and valleys will no longer resound with the din of labor, or be blackened by the smoke of the factory, would surely be out of place. What we might regret is that Britain, which we know and are proud of, the Britain of great achievements in politics and literature, of free thought and self-respecting obedience, of a thousand years of high endeavor and constant progress, was indeed to perish when these factories and furnaces whirled and blazed their last. But, it is not so. This country's fortunes are gradually being merged into those of a Greater Britain, which largely, through the aid of coal, whose prospective loss we are lamenting, has grown beyond the limits of these islands to overspread the vastest and richest regions of the earth; and we have no reason to fear that the great inheritance that America and Australia and New Zealand have accepted from us will in their hands be dealt unworthily with in the future.
GASTON PLANTE.
This eminent scientist was born in Orthez (Department of Basses-Pyrénées) on the 22d of April, 1834; at present in his fiftieth year. He began his scientific career as assistant to Edmund Becquerel at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers at Paris. In the year 1859, after resigning his position at the above named institution, he entered upon his researches in electricity, and has continued them ever since. His work entitled "Recherches sur l'Electricité" is a model of clear language and elegant demonstration, and contains all the papers presented by Planté to the Paris Academy of Sciences since 1859.
