The total number of persons in any way occupied in connexion with mines and quarries in England and Wales in 1901 was 805,185; the number being found to increase rapidly, as from 528,474 in 1881. Coal-mines alone occupied 643,654, and to development in this direction the total increase is chiefly due. The number of ironstone and other mines decreased in the period noticed from 55,907 to 31,606. _Manufacturing Industries._--There are of course a great number of important industries which have a general distribution throughout the country, being more or less fully developed here or there in accordance with the requirements of each locality. But in specifying the principal industries of any county, it is natural to consider those which have an influence more than local on its prosperity. In England, then, two broad classes of industry may be taken up for primary consideration--the textile and the metal. Long after textile and other industries had been flourishing in the leading states of the continent, in the Netherlands, Flanders and France, England remained, as a whole, an agricultural and pastoral country, content to export her riches in wool, and to import them again, greatly enhanced in value, as clothing. It is not to be understood that there were no manufacturing industries whatever. Rough cloth, for example, was manufactured for home consumption. But from Norman times the introduction of foreign artisans, capable of establishing industries which should produce goods fit for distant sale, occupied the attention of successive rulers. Thus the plantation of Flemish weavers in East Anglia, especially at the towns of Worstead (to which is attributed the derivation of the term worsted) and Norwich, dates from the 12th century. The industry, changing locality, like many others, in sympathy with the changes in modern conditions, has long been practically extinct in this district. Then, when religious persecution drove many of the industrial population of the west of Europe away from the homes of their birth, they liberally repaid English hospitality by establishing their own arts in the country, and teaching them to the inhabitants. Thus religious liberty formed part of the foundation of England's industrial greatness. Then came the material agent, machinery propelled by steam. The invention of the steam engine, following quickly upon that of the carding machine, the spinning jenny, and other ingenious machinery employed in textile manufactures, gave an extraordinary impulse to their development, and, with them, that of kindred branches of industry. At the basis of all of them was England's wealth in coal. The vast development of industries in England during the 19th century may be further correlated with certain events in the general history of the time. Insular England was not affected by the disturbing influences of the Napoleonic period in any such degree as was continental Europe. Such conditions carried on the work of British