1899] Mineral Resources of the Ottawa District. 15 



a fine large mortgage on his property, which probabl)- he may 

 never be able to Hft. One need not go far from the province of 

 Ontario for illustrations of this peculiar tendency on the part of 

 certain persons to invest money in this reckless manner. Thus 

 when we find men, otherwise shrewd enough in ordinary business 

 matters throwing away thousands of dollars in an attempt to 

 obtain oil by boring through the Laurentian granites and gneisses 

 as has been done in the upper Rideau district not very long ago, 

 even by people who should have known better, there is evidently 

 a necessity for furthur enlightenment on these subjects, in order 

 that the public may be better guided. Recently, I met a person 

 whowasendeavouringtoobtaincoalby sinking a shaft through the 

 crystalline limestone in Lanark county, and ih reply to my 

 ob.servations that he would not find it there, he stated that he 

 knew he did not agree with the scientists on the subject, but he 

 was convinced the coal was there, because he had smellcd the 

 gas in the shaft. His case was a hard one and difficult to deal 

 with, for the reasonthat hewouldnot beconvinced on the ground 

 of common sense and scientific knowledge ; and his chances for 

 success were scarcely equal to those of a man I once met in 

 New Brunswick, who had a large farm composed principal!)' of 

 barren grey sandstone, but who knew that there was a large body 

 of iron ore on his place because lightning had struck there twice 

 in fifteen years. 



It is wonderful how some men get carried awa)- on the 

 subject of mines. I have known men of the highest standing 

 in the legal world who were prepared to spend thousands of 

 dollars in mining on the word of a travelling clairvoyant, whom 

 they had consulted on the subject, and who, after going into a 

 tcance, declared he clearly saw a large body of rich ore three 

 hundred feet below the surface. On the mere strength of such 

 a statement a company went to work and sunk a shaft 500 feet, 

 in which they dropped 50,000 dollars of capital, without finding 

 the rich ore body so easily located. People in general will 

 scarcely believe such instances of folly exist among those whom 

 education should cause to know better, but at the same time 



