462 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



long been interrupted by the war to finish their training as quickly as possible ; 

 and secondly, to remedy the defects in the preliminary education of the students, 

 this having fallen far below the usual standard on account of the leniency shown 

 at the examinations. Remedial measures of three kinds are advised : (i) That 

 during the transition period, estimated at two years, the college curricula should 

 be altered by transmitting only the principles of technical knowledge and omitting 

 comprehensive details which can easily be acquired in professional practice. 

 Purely scientific education should, however, be diminished as little as possible, 

 since that is much harder to obtain later on. (ii) To adopt a "far-reaching 

 individualisation of instruction," since men coming back from the army will have 

 arrived at very different stages of knowledge, each requiring special gaps to be 

 filled in. For this purpose it is considered that lectures alone cannot suffice, 

 (iii) Bursaries should be provided for the many whose finances have become 

 embarassed owing to the war, and who would otherwise have to become wage 

 earners at once, to the grave detriment of the public good. Finally, the Committee 

 requests the Army authorities to demobilise the teaching staffs of the technical 

 universities and mining schools at the earliest practicable moment, and the 

 students themselves as soon afterwards as possible. 



The Smithsonian Institute is issuing a series of monographs dealing, in non- 

 technical language, with the mineral resources of the United States. The last 

 published of these {Bulletin 102, Part 6) deals with petroleum. The United 

 States at present produces about two-thirds of the world's supply of this product, 

 so that the information contained in the report is of considerable importance to 

 all users of petroleum and its derivatives. It appears that the liquid deposits in 

 the States are being rapidly exhausted, so fast, indeed, that at the present rate 

 of consumption they will all have been used up by 1930. That is, unless the 

 wasteful method of mining now employed, which yields only about 10 per cent, of 

 the total deposit, is modified. It is not, however, unreasonable to expect that 

 further exploration and development will make available a reserve of oil in Mexico 

 and Central America equal to the total now remaining in the United States. The 

 dominant sources of supply at present are the Kansas-Oklahoma l and the Cali- 

 fornian fields, from which about one-third of the total reserve has been used up. 

 Outside the United States the most important reserves are those in Mexico and 

 Russia, the others (in the Dutch East Indies, Roumania, India, and Galicia) being 

 relatively unimportant. The process of exhaustion may be delayed by improve- 

 ments in the methods of mining and of consumption. At present a field is 

 "exhausted" when some 40 to 50 per cent, of its store has been withdrawn. By 

 preventing the ingress of water by the improved methods of drilling and pumping 

 now available much better figures can be obtained ; further, the enormous waste 

 which now occurs could easily be stopped. As to consumption, crude oils should 

 be used directly in engines of the Diesel type, instead of using them as fuel for 

 raising steam. This alone would double the power-generating capacity of the 

 7,000,000,000 barrels still underground. It is stated that "the use of oil-fuel 

 has grown so extensively during the past year that an overburden now rests upon 

 it which will bring an inevitable train of industrial disasters in the coming months, 

 as the supply is wholly inadequate to sustain even the current demand. Unfor- 

 tunately, the swing away from coal in favour of fuel-oil is still continuing." 

 However, even when the liquid deposits are exhausted the " petrol era " will not 



1 The Cushing Pool in Oklahoma gave about 300,000 barrels per day in 191 5 : 

 more than one-third of the daily consumption of petroleum in the whole of the 

 U.S.A. 



