Lesley.] 286 [March. 



whole) the volatile matter (mean of two assays) was 47.11 per cent., 

 Coke (52.71, 53.07) 52.89; Ash (1.65, 1.81) 1.73. 



There seems to be no escape from the conclusion that the sub- 

 stance filling this vertical vein is a product of the gradual oxidation 

 of coal oil once filling the open fissure. It is not impossible there- 

 fore that the lower regions of the fissure are still filled with liquid 

 oil; and that we may see in this instance an illustration of the con- 

 dition of things far beneath the surface of the coal oil regions of 

 Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. The vast quantities of oil 

 delivered by the flowing, the blowing, and the spouting wells require 

 fissures of this kind, either never opened up clear to the surface, or 

 else once opened and now reclosed, or else filled in with detritus. 

 The diff"erent depths at which closely neighboring wells begin to 

 spout or to flow, oblige us to imagine similar fissures at oblique an- 

 gles. If Sterry Hunt's hypothesis be accepted, that the Corniferous 

 Limestone is the mother rock of the oil, such fissures become still 

 more needful to bring the oil to the surface, from the vast depths at 

 which the Corniferous Limestone underlies the True Coal-measures. 



Vanuxem first described the films and buttons of " anthracite," as 

 he called it, with and in the quartz crystals of the Calciferous Sand- 

 rock of New York, at the base of the Silurian system. Mr. Hunt 

 describes the veins and fissures of all the limestone, shale, and sand- 

 stone members of the great Quebec Group (which is the enlarged 

 equivalent of the Calciferous in New England and Canada) as fre- 

 quently either lined or filled with a similar substance. Sometimes 

 the varnish lining has cracked in shrinking; sometimes botryoidal 

 masses of it have been left; sometimes hundreds of pounds of it are 

 packed away solid in the crevices. In one exceedingly instructive 

 case the vein of bitumen, inclosed in walls of rock crystal, is itself 

 cut by thin seams of quartz.* 



* Hunt in Amer. Journal, March, 1S63, p. 163. The force of the argument 

 deducible from this fact, against the igneous, and in favor of the aqueous produc- 

 tion of our quartz veins, will he felt at a glance. I cannot but express my sur- 

 prise that Sir David Brewster should continue to claim as an argument for the 

 igneous theory, the presence of two different elastic hydrocarbon fluids in cavi- 

 ties in topaz, beryl, and diamond, especially in regard to the permanent compres- 

 sion they have effected in the molecular structure of the walls of the cavities, as 

 detected by polarized light. (Trans. R. S. Edinb., XXIII, i.) Yet M. Fournet 

 supports his argument. (Comptes-rendus, LI, p. 42, LIII, pp. 83, 610 ; Geol. 

 Lyonnaise, Lyons. 18C1, pp. 633, 715, quoted by Sir David Brewster.) While M. 

 Elie de Beaumont rests for its refutation on the volatility of the fluids, and the 

 frequency of fluid-cavities in all quartz gangue rock. (Comptes-rendus, LIII, p. 

 83.) Sir David Brew-titer says that M. Fournet "has removed this difiiculty " 

 (Geol. Lyon., p. 536), but does not say how. 



