ABSTRACT
Next after coal and iron, lead is the mineral most abundant in Wales. Indeed, it is more generally dispersed through the country than any other, coal being found in five of the twelve counties, whilst lead is worked more or less in eight. But in geologic position and relative quantity there exists as great a difference between these minerals as there is in their nature and in the method of working them-coal and iron lying, for the most part, in vast beds having a horizontal and continuous extension of several miles from the centre, whereas lead occupies but a narrow and ribbon-like breadth, running in thin veins, which dip vertically, and intersect the parent rock, like walls of metal. All through the country, from the sea-fretted cliffs of Gower, on the south, to the Great Orme's Head on the north, I found at various points in my long journey the mining of lead in progress, and that it formed in many districts an important field for the employment of capital and labour. The counties in which lead is worked are Glamorgan, Carmarthen, Cardigan, Montgomery, Merioneth, Carnarvon, Denbigh and Flint. In the first named of these there is little done, operations being confined to the re-opening a few months ago of some old workings in Gower. The most productive counties are Flintshire and Cardiganshire, in which the mineral is very abundant, and extremely rich-the yield of the former, though the smallest county in Wales, doubling that of the latter, and considerably exceeding that of Cornwall, whose superficial area is five times larger.
