Great Britain has one-half of the coal fields of all Europe, but even she has but one square mile of coal to twenty square miles of territory. Beside, our coal seams are of great thickness, and lie comparatively near the surface. In the far West, vast fields of lignite[14] have been discovered, so that there seems no prospect of our exhausting our fuel supply for ages to come. The diamond is crystallized carbon, and can be burned, though one would hardly care to be warmed by so costly a fire. Cleopatra, in a freak of extravagance, dissolved a wonderful pearl, but who could think of the wise queen of England using in so wasteful a manner her Kohinoor.[15] Six of the great diamonds of the world are called, by way of eminence, “The Paragons,” and a romantic interest has been attached to this form of carbon among all nations. In point of fact, however, the black diamonds of the coal pit are more interesting, and of far greater value to mankind than these glittering gems from Golconda,[16] Brazil and the Dark Continent.[17] TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE; OR, THE POISON PROBLEM. BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D. CHAPTER V.—PROHIBITION. “Rugged or not, there is no other way.”—_Luther._ The champions of temperance have to contend with two chief adversaries—ignorance and organized crime. The well-organized liquor league can boast of leaders whose want of principles is not extenuated by want of information, and who deliberately scheme to coin the misery of their fellowmen into dollars and cents. But the machinations of such enemies of mankind would not have availed them against the power of public opinion, if their cunning had not found a potent ally in the ignorance, not of their victims only, but of their passive opponents. We need the moral and intellectual support of a larger class of our fellow-citizens, before we can hope to secure the effectual aid of legal remedies, and in that direction the chief obstacles to the progress of our cause have been the prevailing misconceptions on the following points: