The Chinese knew how to collect the gases which came from coal, and they used them for illuminating. The accounts of the early missionaries state that from time immemorial the Chinese used to bore into the earth in search of gas, and when they found it they conveyed it in pipes to the places where it was wanted. Gas was not used for illuminating in Europe until quite recently. Historians also say that for many centuries mines of coal have been worked in the Celestial Empire, but that the working was in a very barbarous fashion. Many of their coal mines consist of open cuttings; when they went underground they took but little care to construct drains or support the subterranean ways, and they took no precaution whatever against explosions of fire-damp, which often proved fatal. Their working of mines to-day is in the same barbarous fashion of centuries ago, and one might be pardoned for thinking, like the boy who was trying to learn the alphabet, that it was hardly worth while to go through so much to accomplish so little. In England there are evidences to show that coal was known to the Romans, and possibly to the Britons before the Roman invasion; but it was only worked at the outcrops of the coal seams. No mention is made of coal until the time of Henry II. In 1259 a charter was granted to the Freemen of Newcastle, giving them the liberty “to dig for cole,” and a few years later coal was carried to London. In 1306 Parliament petitioned the king to prevent the importation of coal, and Edward I. issued a proclamation forbidding the use of mineral fuel. Coal was worked to some extent in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century the English coal mines were in full operation. In 1615 four thousand English ships were employed in the coal trade. The coal mines of Belgium were opened about the same time as those of England. The Belgian coal miners tell a curious story of the discovery of coal, in the twelfth century, at the village of Plenevaux, near Liège. One of the old chroniclers gives the account as follows:— [Sidenote: THE MINER OF PLENEVAUX.] “Houillos, a farrier, at Plenevaux, was so poor as not to be able to earn enough for his wants, not having sometimes bread enough to give to his wife and children. One day, being without work, he almost made up his mind to put an end to his life, when an old man, with a white beard, entered his shop. They entered into conversation. Houillos told him his troubles; that, being a disciple of St. Eloi, he worked in iron, blowing the bellows himself to save the expense of an assistant. He could easily realize some advantages if charcoal was not so dear, as it was that which ruined him. “The good old man was moved even to tears. ‘My friend,’ said he to the farrier, ‘go to the neighboring mountain, dig up the ground, and you will find a black earth suitable for the forge.’