(36.) Ex. 1. (35.) I. It is not many years since an attempt was made to establish a colliery at Bexhill, in Sussex. The appearance of thin seams and sheets of fossil-wood and wood-coal, with some other indications similar to what occur in the neighbourhood of the great coal-beds in the north of England, having led to the sinking of a shaft, and the erection of machinery on a scale of vast expense, not less than eighty thousand pounds are said to have been laid out on this project, which, it is almost needless to add, proved completely abortive, as every geologist would have at once declared it must, the whole assemblage of geological facts being adverse to the existence of a regular coal-bed _in_ the Hastings’ _sand_; while this, on which Bexhill is situated, is separated from the _coal-strata_ by a series of interposed beds of such enormous thickness as to render all idea of penetrating _through_ them absurd. The history of mining operations is full of similar cases, where a very moderate acquaintance with the _usual order of nature_, to say nothing of theoretical views, would have saved many a sanguine adventurer from utter ruin. (37.) Ex. 2. (35.) II. The smelting of iron requires the application of the most violent heat that can be raised, and is commonly performed in tall furnaces, urged by great iron bellows driven by steam-engines. Instead of employing this power to force _air_ into the furnace through the intervention of bellows, it was, on one occasion, attempted to employ the steam itself in, apparently, a much less circuitous manner; viz. by directing the current of steam in a violent blast, from the boiler at once into the fire. From one of the known ingredients of steam being a highly inflammable body, and the other that essential part of the air which supports combustion, it was imagined that this would have the effect of increasing the fire to tenfold fury, whereas it simply _blew it out_; a result which a slight consideration of the laws of chemical combination, and the state in which the ingredient elements exist in steam, would have enabled any one to predict without a trial.