110 NATURE AXD ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM. [Feb. 5, 



into the tanks at a temperature of 90° F. I also found that an oil 

 fresh from a well, kept in an open vessel at a temperature of about 

 100° F. for four days, ceased to lose weight and decreased in vol- 

 ume twenty-five per cent. In another experiment, one litre of oil was 

 exposed to the sun in a pan placed in a window seat for three days. 

 The temperature was at no time above 90° F., and over half of the 

 time was below 70° F. The loss was twenty per cent, by volume, and 

 the specific gravity changed from 28.5° B to 20.2° B. These re- 

 sults show that at the surface, natural evaporation is also a potent 

 factor in the conversion of petroleum into maltha and asphaltum. 



I wish to note here several facts of a different order bearing upon 

 these questions. In 1865-6 the carcasses of several whales were ly- 

 ing half buried in the sand of the Pacific coast, between Point Con- 

 ception and Ventura, California. They furnished food for numer- 

 ous vultures and buzzards, and while the odor was not agreeable, it 

 was the odor of rancid fat rather than of putrid flesh. During the 

 summer of 1894 a vast number, weighing many tons, of deep sea 

 fish, in a dying condition, came ashore upon that same coast for at 

 least two hundred miles. Many of these fish were of large size, and 

 among other species was a basking shark, twenty-six feet in length. 

 An examination by one of the officers of the State Fish Commission 

 led to the discovery that the gills of these fish were more or less 

 filled with bitumen, which constantly rises from the bed of the ocean 

 ■off this coast. The destruction of animal life was enormous. The 

 first gale with a high tide buried nearly all of the fish in the sand 

 of the beach. Complete skeletons of whales have been repeatedly 

 discovered in the petroleum-bearing strata of that region, some of 

 them saturated with bitumen. 



One hundred miles due north of this coast, on the other side of 

 the Coast Ranges, I have examined some of the most extensive 

 veins of asphaltum yet discovered. They have been traced across the 

 country continuously for miles and have been mined to a depth of 

 more than three hundred feet. In chemical composition the asphaltum 

 bears a specific relation to the petroleums of Ventura county. They 

 both contain the esters of the pyridin bases. These asphaltum veins 

 lie on one side of and irregularly parallel with a stratum of sand- 

 stone, which, like all of the strata of that region, stands nearly 

 vertical. Along this sandstone stratum bitumen exudes for a long 

 distance. Against it, and on the other side of it, rests a bed of 

 infusorial earth, at least 1000 feet in thickness, in some places satu- 



