by Dr, T, S terry Hunt. 251 



It is now many years since Sir William Logan described the 

 occurrence of petroleum springs in Gaspe, and collected specimens 

 of the oil, which are preserved in the Geological Museum. One of 

 these, near Gaspe Bay, is described as occurring on the south side of 

 the St. John's River about a mile and a half above Douglastown, 

 where it may be collected by digging pits in the mud on the 

 beach. Another locality is about 200 yards up a small fork of 

 the Silver Brook, which falls into the Southwest Arm six or seven 

 miles above Gaspe Basin. The oil collects in pools along the 

 stream, and may be gathered in considerable quantities. The 

 cavities in a greenstone dyke on Gaspe Bay were also found to 

 be filled with petroleum, and the odor of it from the rock was 

 perceived at a considerable distance. The dyke, which marks a 

 fold in the stratification, runs in the direction of the petroleum 

 springs, and the evidences of the distribution of petroleum are thus, 

 as Sir William Logan has remarked, visible along a line of twenty 

 miles (Report for 1844, p. 41.) Attention has recently been 

 drawn to these indications, and a company formed with a view 

 of exploring this region for petroleum. Here, as well as in 

 western Canada and the United States, the connection is evident 

 between the springs and undulations of the strata which favor the 

 accumulation of the petroleum. 



Supplementary Note, 



We have stated in the preceding paper that the different 

 mineral combustibles have been derived from the transformations 

 of vegetable matters, or in some cases of animal tissues analogous 

 to these in composition. The composition of woody fibre or cel- 

 lulose, in its purest state, maybe represented byC24H2o02o, 

 or as a compound of the elements of water with carbon : the in- 

 crusting matter of vegetable cells, to which the name of lignine 

 has been given, contains however a less proportion of oxygen and 

 more carbon and hydrogen than cellulose, so that the mean com- 

 position of recent woods, as deduced from numerous analyses of 

 various kinds, may be represented by C24H1 8.4O1 6.4. We 

 may conceive of four different modes of transformation of woody 

 fibre, all of which probably intervene to a greater or less degree 

 in the production of mineral combustibles ; and in considering 



