OUR COAL MINES.

Evening Star, Issue 3010, 11 October 1872, Page 4

OUR COAL MINES.

The coal mines of the country, though attracting considerable interest in certain quartors, are not calling forth the energy and capital which they would appear to deserve. By the last mail from England we learned that the question of a coal supp y for Great Britain was again seriously engaging the attention of scientific and practical men. The chance of a coal famine was being discussed, while the relative proportion of supply and demand had caused higher quotations. It is impossible to shut our eyes to a fact that sooner or later, perhaps much earlier than is generally anticipated, the manufacturers in the home country may have to look for their supplies of coal outside Great Britain. I he result of this, and its benefit to New Zealand, it is difficult to over e diraate. Iron and coal have been said to have caused England’s greatness, and if such is the case the future before this Colony is indeed a brilliant one if its resources are developed and a trade in them established -with the mother country. It is, therefore, peculiarly interesting to note the efforts made in the direction of the development o? our coal mines, A paper ou this subject, recently laid on the table of both branches of the Legislature, and compiled by Dr Hector, is most instructive. Deports on the various coal fields are given, wdth lithographed sections, showing the workings at several mines, and a table giving analyses of the different coal seams in the Colony is appended. Dr Hector states that he has excluded from this table all analysis of coal not of practical importance, and that where several analyses have been made of coals from the same district or locality they are arranged according to their relative value, obtained by calculating their evaporative power, or the number of pounds of boiling water which should be evaporated by 11b of each kind of coal. From the table, we learn that in the Province of Auckland nine seams of coal, varying from 6 to 18 feet in thickness ; in Wellington one, mentioned as “a thick seam in Nelson, twelve seams, also varying from

6to 18 feet in thickness; in Canterbury, coal has been found in the Malvern Hill district and at the Amuri. Respecting the former they are stated to be extensive, but detached, areas of brown coal, which in many cases have been alter d to a valuable steam coal by the ndlm nee of igneous rocks, and are distinguished as glance coals ; seams 2 feet to 8 feet thick, in micaceous and argillacenus shales. Mines have been opened in brown coal on the Hawkins River, and in the glance coal on the Selwyu River, and the Kowai River. Composition of the glance coal varies, according to the proximity of the igneous rock which has effected it; seams of unaltered brown coal occurring 25 feet under dolorite rocks. ” I n Westland coal is found in two districts, in Otago in live, and in Southland in nine. We thus learn that in forty different places, scattered over the Colony, from the far north to the extreme south, coal has been found, and from this fact we may fairly draw the inference that vast seams have still to be discovered. The wealth which the Co ony possesses in the mineral can hardly be calculated, and when we remind our readers of the capital which, the working of the mines will inevitably attract, the population it will draw to the colony, the trade in coal which must follow, and the general increase to the business of the Colony which it must cause, they will be able to gain a faint idea of the importance to be attached to the -practical development of the coal resources of the Colony.—Wellington Evenhiq Post.