The smoke nuisance of that day deserves a passing notice. Smoke was then with many a grand luxury. Old Hollingshed says, “Now we have many chimneys, yet our tenderlings do complain of rheums, and catarrhs, and poses. Once we had nought but rere-doses,[58] and our heads did never ake. For the smoke of those days was a good hardening for the house, and a far better medicine to keep the good man and his family from the quack or the pose, with which then very few were acquainted. There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain, who have noted how the multitude of chimneys do increase, whereas in their young days, there was not above two or three, if so many, in some uplandish towns of the realm, and peradventure in the manor places of some great lords; but each one made his fire against a rere-dose in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. But when our houses were built of willow, then we had oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but a great many altogether men of straw, which is a sore alteration.” Leaving this digression, let us try and get a bird’s-eye view of the coal-fields of the British Isles. If we commence in Devonshire, we find there the Devonian culms, or Bovey Tracey coal, lying near the surface of the ground, and of little except local use. Crossing over the Bristol Channel, we come into Pembrokeshire, to the Welsh basin, remarkable because thence we mostly get our anthracite coal. Thence we pass on to the Derbyshire coal-fields, that go with little interruption into Scotland, averaging 200 miles in length, and about 40 in width,—once mighty tropical swamps, jungles, and forests, now become chief minerals of commerce. Included in this last immense field is the great Newcastle coal district, the most celebrated of any, supplying almost all the south of England, and nearly all London, with their best coals; and the Scotch carboniferous system, celebrated for its numerous fossils, and for its general base of old red sandstone. In addition to which there is the Irish carboniferous system, occupying as much as 1,000 square miles, but of an inferior quality, and not likely to be of any great economical importance.