DIFFICULTIES BESETTING PREVISION. l ( .»'-» 



tion for the test, 20 miles distant from any producing oil well, gave me no 

 Little concern, since it' the well should prove a failure oil geology would 

 receive a fatal blow, in the eyes of practical oil men, while if successful 

 their confidence in geology would lie greatly increased and strengthened. 



The problem I had to solve was, whether the interval between the 

 surface rocks and the oil sand would remain the same as at Mount 

 Morris, or whether it would either thicken or thin ; since, upon my theory, 

 if I made a location at Mannington where the Waynesburg coal had an 

 elevation of 900 feci ;il>ove tide, and the interval from it to the oil sand 

 remained the s.ime (1,625 feet) as ;it Mount Morris, then if the oil rock 

 proved open and porous a fair oil well should he found; while if, on 

 the other hand, tins interval should thin away to, say, 1,575 feet, then 

 gas would be found, and if it should thicken up to 1,675 feet, salt water 

 would he obtained, and tins especially would be fatal to my theory, for 

 the practical oil men were predicting that Mannington was several miles 

 too far westward, ami hence was in salt water territory. In the absence 

 of any evidence bearing upon the subject, and rather in opposition to a 

 general geological fact, viz, that the sedimentary beds thin away rapidly 

 westward from the Alleghanies, I made up my mind to take no chances 

 on salt water in this, the first test well, and in finally determining the 

 location, placed it where the Waynesburg coal had an altitude of 970 

 feel and the Washington about 1,125 feet. Such a location at Mount 

 Morris would have been in the gas belt by an elevation of 20 to 25 feet 

 to spare. 



A.s the drill progressed it was found that the intervening rocks were 

 thickening instead of thinning when compared with the Mount Morris 

 column, and when the top of the oil sand (" L Big Injun") was finally 

 struck, the interval from it to the Waynesburg coal measured exactly 

 1,725 feet instead of 1,625, as at Mount Morris. Finally, on October 11, 

 L889, the drill penetrated the oil-bearing zone of this sand, and was im- 

 mediately followed by a -copious showing of oil. the result beingthal my 

 theory was at once raised from the domain of conjecture to that of demon- 

 strated fact. Thus a greal victory was won for geology, since il taught 

 the practical oil men once for all that they could not afford to disregard 

 geological truths in their search for oil deposits. 



This thickening of the interval between the Waynesburg coal and the 

 oil sand to the extern 1 of 100 feet, in the distance of 25 miles from Mount 

 Morris to Mannington, proved to have exactly the effeel thai I anticipated, 

 i. «.. it caused the oil bell to veer eastward until (as may he <i^-n by the 

 accompanying map, plate 6) it gradually encroaches upon the territory 

 occupied by the gas bell in the vicinity of .Mount Morris: so thai the 

 western edge of the oil bell at Mannington is found where the Waynes- 



