No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 461 



and one piece sets forth the stone as it was originally exposed — 

 trulj' ver}^ unattractive. 



DEEPEST WELL IN AMERICA. 



Your attention is now called to the draft of the deepest hole 

 drilled by man in America — and there is only one other deeper arti- 

 fically made hole in the world, that is Schladebach, Prussia. This 

 deepest well in the United States is near West Elizabeth, Allegheny 

 county, and was sunk by the Forrest Oil Company, under the 

 management of the Standard Oil Company, in 1898. The draft gives 

 both geological and record sections. My object in producing it is 

 to show the limestone beds at a depth of over a mile, and the tem- 

 perature of water in the well at various depths. You will observe 

 that at 5,180 feet they encountered a mass of limestone 50 feet 

 thick; then alternate beds of slate and limestone, and then a bed 

 of limestone five feet thick at a total depth of 5,445 feet, with slate 

 and shells 30 feet below that; or at 5,475 feet below the surface of 

 the earth, unmistakable evidences of former animal life. 



The temperatures taken at the various depths are intensely interest- 

 ing: At 520 feet, 57 degrees Fahrenheit; at 2,250 feet, 64 degrees; 

 at 2,340 feet, 78 degrees; at 5,000 feet, 120 degrees; at 5,385 feet, 127 

 degrees; and, at the bottom of the hole, 5,575 feet, a little over 130 

 degrees. At the rate of heat progression from 5,000 feet to 5,575 

 feet, 10 degrees, or one degree increase in every 57|^ feet, boiling 

 water or steam would be reached long before a depth of 10,000 feet. 

 This notable increase of temperature with depth has been recorded 

 in connection with a number of deep wells in Western Pennsylvania 

 and West Virginia, and also in the Tamarach mining shaft in North- 

 ern Michigan, now dow^n about 5,200 feet, with a probability of go- 

 ing to 6,000 feet, if the water and air do not become too hot to be 

 borne by the miners, notwithstanding cold air being forced down, 

 and ice-cold water poured over them every few minutes. In the 

 great railroad tunnel now being built through the Alps, of a less 

 vertical depth than G,000 feet, water so hot has been struck that 

 one end of the tunnel, sloping inward, had to be abandoned, and in 

 the other end the men can now work only one hour a day on account 

 of the intense heat. 



Having called special attention to this feature of the proved inter- 

 ior heat of the earth, I wish to state that the heat is not invariably 

 the same at given depths. The effect on the surface of the earth 

 of these changes of temperature underneath should be most care- 

 fully studied, as it may have something to do with changes of tem- 

 perature at the surface; and thus with the sudden meteorological 

 changes that our National Weather Bureau so frequently fails to 

 foretell. This world was made for man, not man for the world; 

 and we are to solve the mysteries of its great depths as well as its 

 surface and that which is above us. 



ARTESIAN WELLS. 



Last year there was some discussion on the purity of water in 

 deep wells, and an allusion to artesian wells. Our school-books and 

 most of our standard works tell us that water flows from the 



