136 PECKHAM — THE GENESIS OF BITUMENS. [April 1, 



forced it there. When it has entered cavities like those in the 

 coral reef described by Mr. Phillips, the diminished pressure and 

 evaporation have resulted in the escape of the most volatile con- 

 stituents. When the reservoir of the Bradford field was first pene- 

 trated, the pressure was estimated at 4000 pounds to the square inch. 

 Whether or not this estimate was approximately correct, the pres- 

 sure was sufficient to throw the well casing and piping out over the 

 top of a derrick and land it in a meadow near by. A short time 

 after the famous Karg well was struck near Findlay, O., I, myself, 

 saw a pressure gauge register 450 pounds per square inch. Burning 

 gas wells in western Pennsylvania sent streams of flame into the 

 air eighty feet in height. Notwithstanding this accumulation of the 

 facts of experience during many years, writers still ignore the tre- 

 mendous significance of such phenomena, and speak of these 

 deposits of bitumen as if they resembled a turn-over or an apple- 

 dumpling laid away by nature. Gas cannot have been held under 

 such tremendous pressure through cycles of geologic time in reser- 

 voirs of porous rocks, from which it has been filtering, as suggested 

 by Mr. Phillips. 



The complete inadequacy of all these arguments was never more 

 fully set forth than in the language used by Mr. Phillips : ''The 

 movement of the oil through the rock displaced from the inter- 

 stices in which it had originally collected would have been accel- 

 erated as the transition from solid organic tissues to liquid had 

 been advanced." The decomposition of organic matter i7i sitic 

 could never have occurred under any conditions of accelerated 

 pressure of even moderate amount. The rocks must have been 

 consolidated and capable of resisting pressure before, action and 

 reaction being equal, the pressure could accumulate. These facts 

 are themselves the strongest reason for belief that the bitumens 

 were never formed in situ in the porous rocks that contain them, 

 but were gradually accumulated in those porous rocks that had been 

 previously overlaid with impervious strata capable of resisting the 

 enormous pressure until the reservoirs were penetrated by the drill. 

 The fact that in the limestone some fossil cavities are filled while 

 others are empty lies in the further fact, that the lines of shrinkage 

 and other fractures penetrated some of the fossil cavities while 

 others remained intact. 



22. Upon this hypothesis, that bitumens are distillates, all of the 

 variations observed in bitumens of different geological ages are 



