104 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM. [Feb. 5, 



it may, yet there is no coke and no evidence that the temperature 

 approached that of a brick kihi, nor such a temperature as in the 

 ordinary processes of technology is found necessary to produce 

 similar changes within periods of time upon which such processes 

 are contingent. It was in the midst of such phenomena as I have 

 just described and in the light of these facts that I then asserted 

 that we cannot '' reason from the processes of technology, bounded 

 as they are by time and space, to the infinity of nature which it is 

 impossible to imitate;" meaning that such reasoning cannot be 

 applied to details. 



A book was published in 1895, of which the eminent Swiss geol- 

 ogist, M. August Jaccard, was the author. The fact that it was a 

 posthumous work leads one to pass lightly over mere blemishes of 

 manner and style, and to note only those errors of judgment which 

 led the author to erroneous conclusions. The book manifests a wide 

 range of reading within the limits of publications in the French 

 language, which has made it necessary that the author should con- 

 fine himself to translations of the many memoirs that have appeared 

 by English and American authors, and while the notices of such 

 authors are frequently inadequate, few, if any, are omitted. M. 

 Jaccard passes in review all of the different theories that have been 

 proposed as a possible explanation of the phenomena observed in 

 relation to the occurrence of bitumens in the Upper Valley of the 

 Rhone, and discards all of those that regard bitumen as resulting from 

 any cause or causes other than the alteration of animal remains by 

 a special process of bituminization that has converted the organic 

 matter directly into bitumen. He says, *' distillation is an hypoth- 

 esis absolutely destitute of proof" (p. no), and, referring to the 

 views of MM. Daubrae, Lartet and Coquand, he says further that 

 *' Their error consists in the fact of having confounded the forma- 

 tion of bitumen with the phenomena of its appearance {reappari- 

 tion) at the surface which is posterior to it." 



M. Jaccard then proceeds to set forth a system of nomenclature 

 of his own and says, *'It is in vain to wish to attempt a rational 

 and systematic classification of natural hydrocarbons, solid and 

 liquid and gaseous. It is in vain to set forth the multiplicity of 

 names that have been applied to them by different authors. The 

 expressions naphtha, petroleum, maltha, glutinous, viscous or solid 

 bitumen, asphalt or pisasphalt, etc., are employed concurrently and 

 without determined reasons. Their state, whether solid, liquid or 



