LAW'S OF GAS ACCUMULATION. 213 



"As every one knows, it is scarcely possible to penetrate the earth to a consider- 

 able depth anywhere within the Paleozoic area (except the rocks are highly con- 

 torted) without getting some natural gas, but the largt supplies are confined to 

 restricted areas, and it was to prevent the waste of capital in an indiscriminate 

 search for these great stores of valuable fuel that prompted my original article on 

 the subject. The drill will, of course, finally settle the question as to whether or 

 not my conclusions were valid. Something, however, hasalready been accomplished 

 in this line. 



"A map of Ohio would reveal the same condition of affairs, for there areonly two 

 or three prominent anticlinals in the state, and after the expenditure of a vast 

 amount of money in drilling, the only large gas wells have been found along these 

 lines of disturbance. Kentucky, Illinois and West Virginia tell the same story ; so 

 that there would seem to be no good reason for any one longer to doubt that structure 

 is the great factor in securing Large and lasting pis wells. 



'" If, however, some skeptical capitalist shall ever find large gas wells, free from 

 water, in a genuine syncline, like that at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, or at the 

 bottom of the trpugh near Irwin, then I shall frankly confess that my judgment 

 has been imposed upon, and that geological structure can give no clue to this hidden 

 t reasure. 



"The reasons why the gas should he stored most abundantly along the arches 

 are so patent that it is unnecessary to state them ; the insoluble problem would be 

 how to imprison large quantities of gas in a syncline. except what little might exist 

 in water under high pressure. 



"' If our main proposition be true, viz, that the principal supplies of natural gas 

 have been stored along the arches of the rocks, then the question of local',,),! must 

 have a very important bearing upon the life of any particular gas field ; for what- 

 ever may have been the source or origin of the gas, whether as a by-product in the 

 genesis of oil fas much of it certainly isi, or from the action of heated saline water 

 mi carbonaceous material, thus originating the Murraysville or odorless gas with- 

 out any oil, as some claim, or in what way soever it is produced, the wells along 

 the arches would have a much longer lease of life. 



"Mr. ('aril has recently sounded a note of warning through the columns of Th 

 Petroleum Age, to which those who think the supply inexhaustible would do well 

 to take heed ; for certain it is that many wells once large have long since ceased to 

 flow. It is true that many of these have hern choked up with salt because the 

 water was not cased off, and the casing having been taken out. a column of water 

 many hundred feet high has imprisoned others, but there is reason for believing 

 that still others have failed because the source of supply was exhausted. On the 

 'anticlinal theory.' it would be expected thai all wells not situated near prominent 

 arches, nor at the upturned ends of vanishing synclines, could not have a long life, 

 since the contents of the reservoir upon which they can draw must necessarily be 

 of limited extent. Bui not so with t hose situated along the prominent a indies, like 

 that at Cannonsburg, Murraysville and Grapeville; for here the quantity in any 

 one sand will be vastly greater than where the rocks are undisturbed, and the dis- 

 turbance itself will have fractured the rocks and thus given access to many other 

 reservoirs below the one from which the well draws immediately. 



"Thefirsl Murraysville well has been delivering from fifteen to twenty million 

 feet of gas daily for nearly ten years, and set. with many other well- in close prox- 

 imity, its volume has not yel been appreciable diminished. Hence there is good 

 reason for believing thai the gas wells situated on the pr inenl arches uiaj have 



