ugh often attended
with great loss of life at one time, are less fatal than the latter.

AUTHORITIES.--The most important new publication on British coal is
that of the royal commission on coal supplies appointed in 1901, whose
final report was issued in 1905. A convenient digest of the evidence
classified according to subjects was published by the _Colliery
Guardian_ newspaper in three quarto volumes in 1905-1907, and the
leading points bearing on the extension and resources of the different
districts were incorporated in the fifth edition (1905) of Professor
Edward Hull's _Coal Fields of Great Britain_. The _Report_ of the
earlier royal commission (1870), however, still remains of great
value, and must not be considered to have had its conclusions entirely
superseded. In connexion with the re-survey in greater detail of the
coalfields by the Geological Survey a series of descriptive memoirs
were undertaken, those on the North Staffordshire and Leicestershire
fields, and nine parts dealing with that of South Wales, having
appeared by the beginning of 1908.

An independent work on the coal resources of Scotland under the title
of the _Coalfields of Scotland_, by R. W. Dixon, was published in
1902.

The Rhenish-Westphalian coalfield was fully described in all details,
geological, technical and economic, in a work called _Die Entwickelung
des niederrheinisch-westfalischen Steinkohlen Bergbaues in der zweiten
Halfte des 19ten Jahrhunderts_ (also known by the short title of
_Sammelwerk_) in twelve quarto volumes, issued under the auspices of
the Westphalian Coal Trade Syndicate (Berlin, 19O2-1905).

The coalfields of the Austrian dominions (exclusive of Hungary) are
described in _Die Mineralkohlen Osterreichs_, published at Vienna by
the Central Union of Austrian mineowners. It continues the table of
former official publications in 1870 and 1878, but in much more detail
than its predecessors.

Systematic detailed descriptions of the French coalfields appear from
time to time under the title of _Etudes sur les gites mineraux de la
France_ from the ministry of public works in Paris.

Much important information on American coals will be found in the
three volumes of _Reports on the Coal Testing Plant at the St Louis
Exhibition_, published by the United States Geological Survey in 1906.
A special work on the _Anthracite Coal Industry of the United Sta