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ous product. Within a year or two past, however, this gas 
has been utilized in numerous localities, and already a large 
number of wells have been bored for the express purpose of 
obtaining it. In some cases these gas wells have been highly 
productive, furnishing an abundance of material for heating 
and lighting in its most convenient and manageable form, so 
that this now deserves to be reckoned as one of the important 
elements in the mineral resources of our country. As this 
method of procuring carburetted hydrogen gas forms 
in this country a new industry, and one which will probably 
assume great importance, a few words in reference to its 
present condition and prospects, may not be without interest 
to the public. I therefore extract from my notes a few facts 
in regard to some of the most interesting of our gas producing 
districts and wells. In the oil district of the Upper Cumber- 
land, in Kentucky, gas accumulates in such quantities beneath 
the sheets of Lower Silurian limestone, that many hundred 
tons of rock and earth are sometimes with great violence 
blown out. These explosions have received the local name 
of “ gas volcanos.” In Ohio, gas escapes from nearly all the 
wells bored for oil in the oil producing districts. Of these, 
two bored by Peter Neff, Esq., near Kenyon College, in Knox 
Co., presents some remarkable features. These wells were 
bored in 1866, at the same geological horizon as that which 
furnishes the oil on Oil Creek. At the depth of about six 
hundred feet in each well, a fissure was struck from which 
gas issued in such volume as to throw out the boring tools, 
and form a jet of water more than one hundred feet in height. 
One of these wells has been tubed so as to exclude the water, 
and gas has continued for five years to escape from it, in such 
quantity as to produce as it rushes through a two and a half 
inch pipe, a sound that may be heard at a considerable dis- 
tance. When ignited, the gas forms u jet of flame three feet 
in diameter and fifteen feet long. The other well, which has 
never been tubed, constantly ejects at intervals of one minute, 
the water that fills it. It thus forms an intermittent fountain 
one hundred and twenty feet in height. The derrick set 
over this well has a height of sixty feet. In winter it becomes 
