14 



British oil, as a cure for sprains and rheumatism ; indeed, it is 

 one of the very earliest localities where pretroleum was distilled 

 for commercial purposes. 



Similar occurrences were noticed at Broseley, Bently, and 

 other districts in Shropshire, and Camden's " Britannia " (1586- 

 1607) described oil and gas springs at Fife, and at Formby and 

 "Wiggin," in Lancashire, and the " boyling " of eggs by the 

 burning gas, although the water through which the gas issued 

 remained cold. Petroleum was found quite two hundred years 

 ago at St. Catherine's Well in Liberton, and is still found at 

 Longton, in Staffordshire, Coalbrookdale and Wellington, in 

 Shropshire, at Worsley and West Leigh, in Lancashire, and in 

 the neighbourhood of Bristol. In the Southgate Colliery, near 

 Chesterfield, there is an intermittent flow of petroleum, amount- 

 ing to from seventy to one hundred gallons daily. The most 

 interesting occurrence of petroleum in this country is, however, 

 one at Alfreton, in Derbyshire, where a small stream of oil flow- 

 ing from a coal-working attracted the attention of Dr., now Lord, 

 Playfair, and was, in 1847, distilled on a commercial scale by 

 Dr. .James Young, the father of the shale oil industry of Scotland. 

 When this supply became exhausted, as soon happened. Dr. 

 Young, believing that the oil had been produced naturally by 

 the action of gentle heat on coal, commenced the experiments 

 which resulted in 1850 in his celebrated patent for obtaining 

 paraffin and paraffin oil from bituminous coal, and ultimately to 

 the extension of this process to the bituminous shales of Scotland. 

 Erroneous as were Dr. Young's premisses, the whole of the 

 Scottish shale oil industry is the direct result of them, and 

 the commencement of the American petroleum industry 

 may also be traced to them. Shortly after the inception 

 of the Scottish industry, a large number of establish- 

 ments, working under royalties from Y'oung's Company, were 

 in existence in the United States, and by 1859 there were 

 between fifty and sixty in existence. In that year, in the hope 

 of obtaining larger quantities of the crude petroleum which was 

 found superficially in many districts in Pennsylvania, and was 

 then still believed to be a product of the natural distillation of 

 coal, the celebrated "Drake" well was sunk at Tarentum, in 

 Alleghany, and started the oil fever, of which the present 

 position of the American petroleum industry is the outcome. 

 The production of these immense quantities of oil without the 

 cost of winning and distilling shale or coal, naturally struck the 

 death-knell of the shale distilleries of the States, which, with 

 the ready adaptability of the American people, were, however, at 

 once converted into petroleum refineries, but the Scotch shale 

 oil industry, although severely handicapped, has, so far, been 

 able to eke out a precarious existence. 



