314 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



If we throw out of view 6 cases above classed as tertiary, quarte- 

 nary, or alluvium, and which might properly be placed with the un- 

 known or miscellaneous, and also 8 cases of really unknown, there 

 remain but 54 instances, whose geological relations are determined. 



Of these 54, 31 are below the carboniferous and coal-producing 

 rocks ; and 23 are in or above the coal series. Of the number of 23, 

 15 are due to the rocks from the lias upward, 8 only belonging to the 

 coal-bearing strata. 



In the present state of knowledge, therefore, the rocks below the 

 coal, produce about four times as much liquid and coagulated bitumen 

 as the carboniferous strata, and one quarter more than all the rocks 

 above the Devonian. The mica slate, serpentine and magnesian beds, 

 explored by Mr. Taylor, in Cuba, are doubtless the equivalent of the 

 Azoic system of Lake Superior, and older than the Potsdam sand- 

 stone. Mr. Taylor regards all the bitumen of the West India Islands, 

 including the Pitch Lake of Trinidad, as belonging to the same age. 



In the mine of Consualidad, near Havana, he found asphaltum in a 

 vein or fissure of the metamorphic rock, which at the bottom of the 

 shaft attained the thickness of 9 feet. On the Tapaste, and on the 

 Matanzas road, he saw it in the same rocks in still greater masses, whose 

 dimensions had been penetrated more than 100 feet without finding 

 the sides. In those islands asphaltum rises to the surface from beneath 

 the sea, after volcanic action has been experienced. The great lake 

 of Trinidad, 3 miles in circumference, he considers as supplied from 

 the rocks of the same age, as those he inspected around Havana. 

 The specimens observed by Mr. Logan on the east coast of Lake 

 Superior were in rocks doubtless not newer than the Potsdam. Those 

 sti'eams of naphtha seen by Humboldt issuing from mica slate, in the 

 Gulf of Cariaco, in Venezuela, were without doubt flowing from the 

 most ancient rocks, and the same may be said of the gneiss, containing 

 iron, in Scandinavia, in which liquid bitumen is found. Everything 

 points to an early, a very ancient existence of bitumen, both solid and 

 liquid in the rocky strata of our planet. 



Was it not as ancient as any of the compound substances comprising 

 these strata ? 



The systems composed of magnesian slates, magnetic iron ore, rnica 

 slate, and magnesian limestone, which are so well developed on Lake 

 Superior, in Missouri, and in Sweden, are older than most of the 

 granites. Rocks that are apparently of the same age, or at least more 

 ancient than any traces of animal or vegetable life in Cuba, in 

 Scandinavia, and in Canada contain bitumen. 



This assertion has not, it is true, a perfectly incontestable basis 

 whereon to rest, but a reasonable good foundation, approaching to a 

 mathematical demonstration. Aside from the facts here presented, the 

 assertion is not theoretically a strange or startling one. 



The components, or simple substances of which bitumen is constitu- 

 ted, existed from the earliest creation. Oxygen must have been in 

 existence as early as the metals ; otherwise they would be found pure, 

 and in the form of alloys, and not of oxides. We must suppose that 



