286 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



Niagara limestone, and this formation throughout Monroe County in 

 \Vc.=tern New York, is described by Mr. Hall as a granular crystalline 

 dolomite, including small laniinos of bitumen, which give it a resinous 

 lustre. When the stone is burned for lime the bitumen is sometimes 

 so abundant as to flow like tar from the kiln. In the Corniferous 

 limestone, at Black Rock, on the Niagara River, petroleum is de- 

 scribed as occurring in cavities, generally in the cells of fossil corals, 

 from which, when broken, it flows in considerable quantities. It also 

 occurs in similar conditions in the Cliff lime stone (Devonian) of Ohio. 

 Higher still in the series, the sandstones of the Portage and Che- 

 mung group in New York are in many places highly bituminous to 

 the smell, and often contain cavities filled with petroleum, and in 

 some places seams of indurated bitumen. In the counties of Erie, 

 Seneca, and Cattaraugus abundant oil-springs rise from these sand- 

 stones, and have been known to the Seneca Indians from ancient 

 times. In the northern part of Ohio, according to Dr. Newberry, 

 petroleum is found to exude in greater or less quantity from these 

 sandstones wherever they are exposed, and the oil-wells of Pennsyl- 

 vania and Ohio are sunk in the same Devonian sandstones, often 

 through the overlving; carboniferous conglomerate, and in some cases 



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apparently, according to Xewberry, through the sandstones them- 

 selves, which are supposed by him to be only reservoirs in which the 

 oil accumulates as it rises through fissures from a deeper source, in 

 proof of which he mentions that in boring wells near to each other 

 the most abundant flow of oil is met with at variable depths. In 

 some instances the petroleum appears to filter slowly into the wells 

 from the porous strata around, which are saturated with it, while at 

 other times the bore seems to strike upon a fissure communicating 

 with a reservoir which furnishes at once great volumes of oil. An 

 interesting fact is mentioned in this connection by Mr. Hall. In the 

 town of Freedom, Cattaraugus County, New York, is a spring which 

 had long been known to furnish considerable quantities of petroleum. 

 On making an excavation about six yards distant, to the depth of 

 fourteen feet, a copious spring of petroleum arose, and for some time 

 afforded large quantities of oil, after which the supply diminished in 

 both the old and new spring?, so that it is now less than at the first 

 settlement of the country. Notwithstanding its general distribution 

 throughout a considerable region in the adjacent portions of New 

 York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, it is only in a few districts that it 

 has been found in quantities sufficient to be wrought with profit. 

 The wells of Mecca, in Trumbull County, Ohio, have been sunk from 

 thirty to two hundred feet in a sandstone which is saturated with oil; 

 of two hundred wells which have been bored, according to Dr. New- 

 berry, a dozen or more are successfully wrought, and yield from five 

 to twenty barrels a day. The wells of Titusville, on Oil Creek, 

 Pennsylvania, vary in depth from seventy to three hundred feet, and 

 the petroleum is met with throughout. The oil from different locali- 

 ties varies considerably in color and thickness, and in its specific 

 gravity. 



The valley of the Little Kenawha, in Virginia, which is to be 

 looked upon as an extension of the same oil-bearing region, con- 

 tains petroleum springs, which so long ago as 1836. according to Dr. 



