COALS AND COAL-FIELDS OF FRANCE.
There are 62 coal-fields in France, but some of them are extremely limited and unproductive. The area of her productive coal-fields is 920 square miles, existing in 45 departments, and producing, in 1852, 4,934,196 tons of coal from about 500 collieries. The largest basins are those of the Loire, which produced 1,639,183 tons of the above amount, and the Nord, or Valenciennes,---a continuation of the Belgian coal-field, —which produced 1,072,845 tons. The area of the first is about 50,000 acres, and of the second about 250,000 acres.
There are 134 workable coal-seams in the Valenciennes coal-field, or the department of Nord. But few of them are one metre, or 3 feet 32 inches, in thickness ; most of the seams are 2 feet or less in diameter. In the basins of the Loire the seams vary in number and dimensions. In the dis trict of the Rive-de-Gier are but three workable beds, with a total thick ness of 32 feet; but in Saint-Etienne district there are 14 seams, with a total thickness of 114 feet ; the seams, however, are subject to greater variation ; they change suddenly and frequently from 6 or 10 feet to 60 or 90 feet, and vice versa. In other districts seams of a remarkably thin character are worked. In the department of the Nord the 12 beds of Aniche are only 22 feet thick; and at Denin 4 seams have only 7-L-- feet of coal in the aggregate. But in the basins of Creuse and Blanzy, de partment of Saone et Loire, the thickness of the seams or beds is often enormous, and far greater than the expansions of our Mammoth, but more limited in extent of area. One of those large seams has a mean thick ness of 40 feet, a maximum thickness of from 180 to 230 feet, and a prolongation on the surface of about 2000 feet. This great bed at Mont
chanin, where it dips at an angle of 40 degrees or over, is 230 feet thick at its outcrop. The depth of the basin is about 450 feet.
Coal seems to have been mined and used in France as early as 1321, and was imported from England in 1520; but not until 1787 was any large amount of coal used in that country. The home production of that year was 215,000 tons, and importation 214,378 tons, of which 154,378 was from England. For the yearly increase, see the accompanying table.
In 1852 there were 10,192 workmen employed in the mines of the Nord,-1612 above ground and 8580 below; they produced 1,072,845 tons of coal, or 105 tons to the hand, and their average annual wages amounted to £21 9s. per head, or about one hundred dollars a year to each man and boy. During the same year the number of men and boys in the depart ment of the Loire was 6724, and the amount of coal produced 1,639,183 tons, or 244 tons per head ; the average wages per head being £29, or less than 140 dollars a year.
The seams of the Nord are thin, as we have described, while those of the Noire are thick, which accounts for the great difference in production per head. The whole production of France, however, may be estimated between those extremes, though generally the production per head is nearer the lower than the higher figures, but the wages in some cases are from 16 to 20 English pounds sterling per annum.