contracted to purchase as much of it as could be supplied, and continued to gain by Cornish ignorance for a considerable time.  The first discoverer of the ore was called Poder (it long went by his name), who actually abandoned the mine in consequence; and we find that it was for some time considered that “the ore came in and spoilt the tin.”  In the year 1822 the produce of the Cornish copper mines amounted to 106,723 tons of ore, which produced 9,331 tons of copper, and 676,285 l. in money.  In the same year, the quantity of tin ore raised was only 20,000 tons.  The Irish and Welsh ores are generally much richer than those of Cornwall; but occasionally they strike on a very rich lode (or vein) in that county.  Last spring, some ore from the Penstruthal mine was ticketed at Truro, at the enormous price of 54 l. 14s. per ton; and a short time previous, in the Great St. George Mine, near St. Agnes, a lode was struck five feet thick, which was worth 20 l. a ton.  There are only six other copper-works in the kingdom besides those of Swansea, five of which are within fifteen miles of that town; the other is at Amlwch (in the isle of Anglesea), where the Marquess of Anglesea smelts the ore raised in his mines there.  The annual import of ore into Swansea in 1812 was 53,353 tons; in 1819, 70,256 tons were brought coastwise:  besides which, several thousand tons of copper ore are imported from America every year.  Since this period there has been a large increase.  Most of the ships which are freighted with copper ore load back with coal, for the Cornish and Irish markets.  Of bituminous, in 1812, 43,529 chalders, and in 1819, 46,457 chalders were shipped coastwise, besides a foreign trade of about 5,000 chalders every year.  Most of this goes to France, the French vessels coming here in ballast for this purpose; but all coal shipped for abroad must be riddled through a screen composed of iron bars, placed three-eighths of an inch apart, as it is literally almost dust.  Great hopes are now entertained here that government will abolish the oppressive duty on sea-borne coal.  In the stone-coal and culm[3] trade, Swansea and Neath almost supply the whole kingdom.  Independent of foreign trade, 55,066 chalders of culm and 10,319 tons of stone-coal were shipped coastwise in 1819:  last year the ports of Swansea and Neath shipped 123,000 chalders of stone-coal and culm.  Stone-coal improves in quality as it advances westward.  That of Milford, of which however only about 6,000 chalders are annually exported, sells generally at from 50s. to 60s. per chaldron in the London market—­a price vastly exceeding the finest Newcastle coal.  It emits no smoke, and is used principally in lime-burning and in manufactories where an intense heat and the absence of smoke is required.  The Swansea culm is mostly obtained about thirteen miles from the town.  The bituminous coal mines in the vale of Tawy are fast getting exhausted, and the supply of coal must at no distant day be drawn farther westward, near the