years carbon which was the principal element in those vast vegetable creations. The primeval forests which have been submerged and compressed in the little island which Englishmen inhabit, have yielded them fuel for centuries; they now supply them with thirtyseven millions of tons of coal in each year; and thousands of will yet elapse before the announcement will be made that the last trunk of these glorious old forests has been consumed,ere the "pick" of the miner must be exchanged for the axe of the woodman, or the oaks of our forests be felled for the fires of our descendants. THE LIMESTONE.-The small channel down which the water flows into the large tidal lake, shows upon each side the limestone beds. These exist in nature of various thicknesses, and they each attest the lengthened existence and final extinction of a creation, for they are composed almost entirely of animal remains. These mountain masses of stone form, not, as in the case of other deposits, the mere charnel house of what were once animal existences-they are made up of the remains of animal life. At the bottom of ancient seas and lakes, testaceous and coralline insects and animalcula lived, died, and petrified, into this hardened rock, of which our oldest bridges are built. Imagination stands aghast at the contemplation of the countless ages necessary for the formation of the vast limestone beds, which abound in so many parts of our globe. How many countless generations of insect life must have passed away, ere a stratum of a few inches could have been formed. Some of the animals which compose this vast limestone rock are so small, that a million of them would only equal the size of a grain of sand! A cubic inch of "Tripoli," a hard species of limestone, contains forty thousand millions of the siliceous coverings of one small insect-forty times the number of the human population of the entire globe. Who shall compute the myriads of sentient existences which lived, performed their functions, and died, in order to form the masses of our mountain limestone. The mind is not merely carried back through immeasurable periods, but "while standing," says an eloquent writer, "amidst the petrified remains of this succession of primeval forests, and extinct races of animals piled up into sepulchral mountains, we seem to be encompassed by the thickest shadow of the valley of death." Of the limestones there are many varieties, extending from the lovely marbles of Pentelicus and Carrara, on which the genius of a Pheidias or a Praxiteles may have been lavished, down to the ironstones of Staffordshire, rich in their mineral ores. Limestone assumes, under different circumstances, every possible hue and shade of colour. Primary limestone is white combined with clayey or argillaceous substances it is blue; oolitic limestone is yellow; marble found at Tiree is red; Derbyshire and Kilkenny marbles arè black; the Connemara marble is green; many kinds of marble combine the most varied of colours, which the skilful polisher is able to bring to light. THE LEAD MINE.-In the outer portion of the great wall of limestone are shown two small veins of lead and immediately beneath them is a small opening or chamber, thickly studded with the stalactites peculiar to the lead mines of Derbyshire. Passing on a short distance from the coal formation the visitor will, upon descending a few rough steps cut in the solid rock, find himself in the midst of a faithfully correct model of the Matlock lead mine in Derbyshire. This model has been built up by Mr. Campbell, who, for nearly the whole of his life has been engaged in works connected with mines. Every part of the actual mine is shown: there is the little ceaseless stream that is always running in this description of mines, there is the shaft through which the produce of the mine is drawn, and by means of which the miner ascends and descends, the miner's footways and tracks; there is the pick and the tools of the miner, the veins of ore, and everything essential to set up the working of a small mine upon one's own account. The ore of lead when first extracted from the mine is called galena," and is found in combination with many earthy matters. The ore is powdered, crushed, and washed, and afterwards smelted in an ordinary furnace, and the molten metal, run off into large iron pans, is called “pig lead." In this state lead always contains a larger or smaller quantity of silver, and many ingenious plans are resorted to for the purpose of securing the more valuable metal at the smallest possible outlay. Until very recently the process employed to obtain the silver was so expensive that it could not be profitably applied except in cases where at least twenty ounces of silver could be obtained from the ton of lead. By a process recently invented by Mr. Pattinson, lead containing only three ounces of silver, may be operated upon with considerable profit. The total quantity of silver thus obtained from the lead mines of the United Kingdom in 1852, according to the valuable mining statistics prepared by Mr. Robert Hunt, of the Museum of Economic Geology, was 818,325 ounces, the value of which at five shillings per ounce was 235,0807. The total quantity of lead ore raised during the year 1852 was 91,236 tons, and the lead obtained from this quantity of ore was 64,987 tons. IRON-STONE.-Near the lead mine will be found specimens of the iron-stone peculiar to the great limestone formations. To have omitted from the illustrations so important a series as the iron-producing strata would have been an oversight indeed, for the varied and extensive uses to which iron is now applied, and the immense amount of interests involved in its production and manufacture, fully justify the application of the name of “the iron age" to the present century. Among other of its uses there are more than 7,000 miles of railway completed in the United Kingdom; and, on a moderate computation, more than 25,000 miles of rails have issued from the mines of this country to form the road for this new system of intercommunication. Here is a veritable 66 girdle for the earth! Mythology bestowed upon its goddess of beauty the love-exciting cestus; industry and science have given to Terra, the mother of the Titans and the giants, a girdle of iron of from 70 lbs. to 80 lbs. weight for every yard of its length, to say nothing of the "chairs" and "bolts required to secure this modern cestus" to its place a girdle more than sufficient to encircle the globe, while its aggregate weight cannot be less than 1,400,000 tons. Iron also lends its aid in the construction of these great highways of the age by the formation of thousands of bridges, many of them of the most colossal and imposing magnitude. The Menai tubular-bridge required to form its giant sides 3,454 tons, its top 2,962, and its bottom 2,944 tons of iron; while one million iron rivets secure the rigid structure, the entire weight of which is 11,468 tons. But iron now not only forms and sustains metallic highways upon the earth, and creates the ponderous locomotives which traverse them, but, although of greater density than a fluid, it is actively employed in discovering new paths on the ocean; and the iron Great Britain, or Himalaya, sails and steams speedily to the East or the Antipodes with its burden of 3,500 tons. On the Clyde, 10,820 persons are employed in the construction of iron steamers. Again, while the iron locomotive drags us along the iron road, or an iron steamer conveys us to distant lands, it may be in each case but to lodge us in an iron house for shelter. In 1851, upwards of 5,000,000 persons walked the long aisles and galleries of an iron building in Hyde-park, in which were concentred the industrial products of the world; and that edifice was constructed with and supported by 4,050 tons of iron; while the Crystal Palace which the visitor has just left, and whose colossal dimensions he may now see before him, swallowed up more than 6,000 tons of cast and wrought iron. To supply the enormous demand created by the wants of the present age, there is produced each year not less than 2,380,000 tons of pig iron, and in order to extract this enormous mass of metal from the ore, there would be consumed 9,500,000 tons of coal, 2,500,000 tons of limestone, and the ores operated upon could not have been less than 7,000,000 tons. And these various blast furnaces would consume a quantity of air exceeding in weight that of all the other materials consumed. One of the large furnaces of South Wales consumes 12,508 cubic feet of air each minute, in supplying the oxygen necessary to the combustion of the fuel. To supply the air consumed on an average in each furnace requires an engine of 25 horse-power. Engines of nearly 12,000 horse-power, are constantly employed to drive the "breath of life" into the glowing masses within the furnaces of the United Kingdom. Each furnace on an average sucks in 17,000 gallons of air per minute, or about five tons weight per hour. The number of furnaces in blast in 1850 was 459; the aggregate weight of air therefore required during that period to keep life in these fiery monsters was not less than 55,080 tons daily, or 20,049,000 tons during the year-a quantity exceeding in weight the totals of the coals, ore, and limestone consumed in the process of smelting. The districts which produce the largest quantities of iron, are South Wales, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the northern districts. The clay ironstone beds of the coal measures furnish the greater proportion of the ore required. The carboniferous and mountain limestones of Lancashire, Cumberland, Durham, Forest of Dean, and Derbyshire, contain valuable beds and veins of hematite, from which large quantities of iron are obtained. The greensand of Sussex also contains iron in such quantities as to lead to the opinion that ere long that county will become the seat of a considerable iron trade. Ironstone has also recently been found in the county of Northampton. In Ireland, in the county of Leitrim, and near Limerick, the ores equal in richness those of Staffordshire and South Wales, and closely approach those obtained from the Scottish "Black Band." One of the greatest advantages which this country possesses in connection with the iron trade is the existence, in close proximity to the ore, of the fuel required for its smelting. In the South Staffordshire district, nature has been lavish of its gifts in this respect, as the coal, the iron ore, the limestone for flux, and the refractory clay required for the construction of the furnaces, are all found grouped together in the same locality. The lower orders of stratification are not yet arranged: they will include the old red sandstone, upon entering which all traces of even vegetable life would be left behind, as the formation of the rocks show that they were formed from the materials of more ancient rocks fractured, decomposed, and slowly deposited in water. Below this old red sandstone, as we continued our progress, we should cross the threshold of the vast silurian system, but even then we should not have arrived half-way towards the foundations of the earth. Far below this would lie the vast and dateless slate rocks which form the Cambrian system. This is a region older than Death, and in these realms the grim tyrant never wielded his sceptre over living forms of any description. Far down into those subterranean depths, the visitor would see piled on each side of him the thick beds of mica or gneiss, which commence the vast pile of stratification. Below these, repose the masses of everlasting granite, the bounds of which no mortal eye shall ever explore; and no geologist shall ever do more than speculate as to what lies beyond and beneath these crystallized masses of matter. Amid these dreary solitudes, all the conditions of life have ceased, and securely fixed to the rocky granite is the eternal bolt which holds the first and lowest end of the wondrous chain of existence. London: Printed by STEWART and MURRAY, Old Bailey. PUBLISHED BY GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND Co., FARRINGDON STREET, LONDON. CAPTAIN SPENCER'S NEW WORK ON THE SEAT OF WAR. In Post 8vo, Price 6s., cloth lettered. TURKEY, RUSSIA, BLACK SEA, and CIR CASSIA. 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