Although it has been within comparatively recent times that coal has come into general use as a fuel, yet there can be no doubt that it was discovered, and that its qualities were known, many centuries ago. To prove its use by the ancients, mention is sometimes made of a passage from the writings of Theophrastus, a pupil and friend of Aristotle and for many years the head of the peripatetic school of philosophy. This passage dates back to about 300 B. C., and is as follows: “Those substances that are called coals and are broken for use are earthy, but they kindle and burn like wooden coals. They are found in Liguria where there is amber, and in Elis over the mountains toward Olympus. They are used by the smiths.” The word “coal,” however, as used in the Bible and other ancient books, usually means charcoal, or burning wood. It is claimed, and not without plausibility, that coal was mined in Britain prior to the Roman invasion. The cinder heaps found among ruins of the time of Roman supremacy in the island point to quite an extensive use of coal by the people of that age. But no writings have been found recording the use of coal prior to 852 A. D. In that year twelve cartloads of “fossil fuel,” or “pit coal,” were received by the abbey of Peterborough in England, and the receipt was recorded. It is said that coal first began to be systematically mined in Great Britain about the year 1180. It is certain that by the end of the thirteenth century the exportation of coal from Newcastle was considerable, and the new fuel had come to be largely used in London. But the people of that city conceived the idea that its use was injurious to the health of the inhabitants generally. The coal, being of the bituminous variety, burned with considerable flame and gave off a good deal of smoke, and the ignorance of the people led them into the belief that the air was contaminated and poisoned by the products of combustion. So they presented a petition to Parliament asking that the burning of coal be prohibited in the city of London. Not only was the prayer of the petitioners granted, but in order to render the prohibition effectual an act was passed making it a capital offense to burn the dreaded fuel. This was in the reign of Edward I., and is characteristic of the policy of that strong, unyielding king, whose ends, great and just perhaps, were too often attained by harsh and cruel means. The coal industry was checked, but it was not destroyed; for, half a century later, we find Edward III. granting a license to the inhabitants of Newcastle “to dig coals and stones in the common soil of the town without the walls thereof in the place called the Castle Field and the Forth.” Afterward this town, owing to the fine coal beds in its vicinity, became one of the great centres of the British coal trade, from which fact doubtless arose that ancient saying concerning useless trouble or labor, that it is like “carrying coals to Newcastle.”