Lesley.] g2 [April, 



The total concealment of the Devonian system beneath the Great 

 Bituminous Coal Area, renders it impossible to speculate with confi- 

 dence upon the details of those changes in its constitution, which 

 we know occur, in passing from its eastern outcrop (along the Alle- 

 ghany Mountain) to its western outcrop in Ohio and Kentucky. 

 With the exception of the two antielinals of Chestnut Ridge and 

 Laurel Hill, which, in their passage from Pennsylvania into Vir- 

 ginia, lift above water-level a few hundred feet of the top measures, 

 in the Gaps of Two Lick, Yellow Creek, Black Lick, the Cone- 

 maugh, the Loyalhanna, and the Youghioghany, we are entirely de- 

 pendent upon oil and salt well boring records for any knowledge of 

 the condition of things in the Devonian underground j how far its 

 salt water and oil-bearing sandrocks extend, each one for itself; the 

 rate at which the intervals diminish in a west-southwest direction ; 

 and in what parts of the formation the greatest diminution of thick- 

 ness takes place. 



But, unfortunately, almost all the old records of salt borings are 

 lost; and very few new wells have been sunk by men who knew the 

 importance of keeping any other than a contract account for number 

 of feet sunk. It is impossible to estimate the loss which geology 

 has suffered during the last six years from this reckless ignorance. 

 The inaccessible Devonian strata have been probed by between ten 

 and twenty thousand augers, to depths varying from a hundred to a 

 thousand feet, and no record kept of all that priceless information. 

 It was allowed to flow off into the ocean of forgetful n ess, as the oil 

 itself was allowed at first to flow by thousands of barrelsful per day 

 into the Gulf of Mexico, And even now, that men of intelligence 

 have waked to the importance of the fact, most wells are still sunk 

 by contract, without any provision for compelling a careful record of 

 the strata. Nor is there any bureau in the State, any society, or any 

 individual, publicly known to charge themselves with putting to 

 common use, or even with accepting for preservation, what few re- 

 cords are made and kept. 



It is with peculiar satisfaction, therefore, that I can publish in the 

 Proceedings of this Society, an authentic record of the deepest recent 

 well in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, and, in fact, the deepest that 

 I know of in the country lying south of Oil Creek Valley. We owe 

 it to the enlightened forethought of one of the master minds of 



CD O 



Western Pennsylvania, Mr. Wm. M. Lyon, joint owner with Shorb 

 & Co., of the large Rolling Mill on the south bank of the Monon- 

 gahela River, and of numerous furnaces and forges in the middle 



