No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 387 



there with more or less success, it is due more to the geological 

 position of the fields and their remoteness from the true Carbon- 

 iferous fields, than to the value of the coal beds themselves. 



The questions are often asked: "Why are there no workable beds 

 in Pennsylvania outside of the limits of the Carboniferous, and is 

 it not possible that there may be beds as yet undiscovered?" An- 

 swers to these are not hard to give: 



(1) At no time during these periods, was the vegetation suffi- 

 ciently luxuriant to supply the material necessary to produce a bed 

 of commercial value, and it was not until the time of the Carbon- 

 iferous period that it was so. 



(2) In Eastern and Central Pennsylvania, the rock formations 

 are frequenth' exposed to view from the highest to the lowest, 

 along rivers and streams^ and being often highly inclined or on 

 heavy dips, it is possible to carefully examine them; while west of 

 the Allegheny Mountains, thousands and thousands of drill holes 

 sunk in search of Petroleum and Natural Gas, have failed to show 

 the existence of such beds. 



Search for Petroleum. 



Another favorite scheme worked by the fakirs is the oil dis- 

 coveries. 



While more or less uncertainty alw^ays exists as to the presence 

 of oil even on the horizons of the well known oil sands, it is in- 

 finitely more doubtful where certain structural conditions exist. 

 In so far as Pennsylvania is concerned, no oil or gas has ever been 

 found where the rocks are on heavy dips, bringing up the oil sand 

 horizons today, and the reason is not hard to determine. Where 

 the gas sands and enclosing rocks come to the surface, the gases 

 have long since escaped and the oil has volatilized and escaped as 

 a gas, if either ever existed. In localities where there is much fold- 

 ing and uplifting in the rock formations, I know of no oil in com- 

 mercial quantities that was ever found in Pennsylvania east of the 

 Allegheny Mountains. 



Briefly summed up, it is apparently useless to drill for oil or gas 

 where the rocks are on heavy pitches. A company of men a year 

 or two ago, sunk a well to a considerable depth in a vain search for 

 oil in West Penn township of Schuylkill county. Although an 

 order for the first barrel of petroleum, at any price, was entered, 

 I have learned that it has never yet been shipped. 



The rocks in that vicinity are highly inclined and the sinking of 

 that well was but an exhibition of folly. They never have gotten 

 or never will get, even if they sink the hole deeper, either oil or 

 gas in commercial quantities. The man or men, who advised the 

 land owners there to sink a well for oil, were ignorant of the first 

 principles of geology or else were crooks or sharpers. 



I was called upon some years ago by a party of men, who for up- 

 wards of a year and a half had been blasting out rock in the Mar- 

 cellus Shales near Auburn, Schuylkill county, in hopes of finding 

 a bed of coal. They had sunk a rock slope in the Marcellus Shale, 

 expecting with each blast to find a large bed of coal exposed. The 

 search was, of course, fruitless and any reputable geologist could 

 have told them that there was no coal bed to be found. These 



