188 PECKHAM — THE GENESIS OF BITUMENS. [April i, 



23. Such, then, is the '^ Testimony of the Rocks," along a line 

 which spans the western continent. Nearly the whole of this line 

 has been brought under my own personal observation. There is 

 also reason for believing that a line might be followed in the -east- 

 ern continent from the North sea to Java that would furnish equally 

 convincing proof. To this testimony is added that of chemistry, 

 technology, mineralogy, and the chemistry of the cooling earth. 

 Each supports and corroborates the other. We have no need to 

 search for coke until we know that coke was formed. We have no 

 need to assume, that in the laboratory of Nature high temperatures 

 and rapid action were necessary to produce results, for which infin- 

 ite periods of time and the lowest possible temperature were fully 

 adequate. 



24. Since this paper was written I am in receipt of the annual 

 address of the President of the Geological Society of America — Dr. 

 Edward Orton — read at Montreal, December 28, 1897; from which 

 exhales the exquisite aroma of fine literature, as from all the other 

 productions of its accomplished author.^ In this address I note 

 two very important observations. He says, in speaking of Mende- 

 lejeff's chemical hypothesis, "It is hard, therefore, to see why, the 

 whole world over, petroleum is entirely wanting in the Archean and 

 exclusively confined to the stratified rocks. There is not an oil 

 field in the world in rocks of Archean time." I pass this by with- 

 out comment to notice his observation upon the gas wells drilled in 

 Oswego and Onondaga counties, N. Y., one of which penetrated 

 a limestone that was found between the Pottsdam sandstone and 

 granite, and furnished a gas pressure of 340 pounds ; the other at 

 a depth of 120 feet, in the Trenton limestone, gave the gas pressure 

 of 1525 pounds. Dr. Orton well says, *'A rock pressure of 1500 

 pounds to the square inch stands for, nay demands, a hermetic 

 seal." Speaking of the Pottsdam sandstone and the dark limestone 

 beneath it, he says, ''The drillings brought from these horizons 

 seem normal in every respect. Certainly there is no hint of any 

 transformation by heat. 'The smell of fire has not passed on 

 them.' There is no carbon residue. The bituminous products 

 found in them cannot owe their origin to the usual form of destruc- 

 tive distillation." It is not likely, that the usual form of destruc- 

 tive distillation as illustrated in a gas retort has obtained anywhere 

 in the operations of nature. I regard the penetration of granite 



^Bull. Geol. Soc. America, ix, 93. 



