The Coal Question A NOTION is very prevalent that in the
continuous progress of science some substitute for coal will be
found—some source of motive power as much surpassing steam as
steam surpasses animal labour. The popular scientific writer Dr.
Lardner, in the following passage of his Treatise on the Steam
Engine, contributed to spread such notions—in him, as a
scientific man, inexcusable.*13 "The enormous consumption of
coals, produced by the application of the steam-engine, in the
arts and manufactures, as well as railways and navigation, has,
of late years, excited the fears of many as to the possibility
of the exhaustion of our coal-mines. Such apprehensions are,
however, groundless. If the present consumption of coal be
estimated at sixteen millions of tons annually, it is
demonstrable that the coal-fields of this country would not be
exhausted for many centuries. "But, in speculations like these,
the probable, if not certain, progress of improvement and
discovery ought not to be overlooked; and we ma