256 
cations of The Geological Society and 
the State and National Geological 
Surveys. These can, with the proper 
interpretation, point the way to new 
oil fields and provinces. As a matter 
of fact, there are probably innumera- 
ble oil fields lying buried in our geo- 
logical libraries—that is, if we knew 
how to interpret the geology. A recent 
example of this is the discovery of oil 
in the Salinas Valley of California af- 
ter 50 years of exploration and nearly 
90 dry test wells, many of which were 
drilled on the best geological advice 
current at that time. ‘The present dis- 
covery was the result of drilling a 
sandy facies which was accurately des- 
cribed by our past fellow member, 
Bruce L. Clark, in an article in our 
Bulletin of 1930. It was covered in 
two significant sentences: 
The other alternative would be that they 
(the sediments composing the Monterey 
deposits) were laid down against the King 
City fault, which marked the shoreline, and 
did not extend over the block. If this were 
true we would expect to find a coarser, more 
clastic and lenticular series of sediments 
composing the Monterey along the margin 
of the King City block. 
I do not know if Mr. Dorrance, who 
was responsible for the location of the 
well which the Texas Co. drilled, ever 
saw this statement by Clark, but his 
reasoning in making the location was 
the same. This idea lay in libraries 
all over the world for 17 years without 
a taker! 
Adding up all the prospective areas 
which have been both mentioned and 
described, we find enormous volumes 
of rocks which have geological condi- 
tions more or less favorable to the 
occurrence of petroleum, yet which 
have had relatively little exploration. 
The reasonable conclusion is that they 
contain proportionately large petro- 
leum deposits, and that our explora- 
tion job is still far from complete. It 
is extremely doubtful if the geology of 
any of these areas will ultimately prove 
to be exactly as it is now envisioned. 
As long, however, as favorable geologic 
factors remain, there is reason for 
drilling and, if drilling, then hope for 
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
additional discovery. Our responsi- 
bility is to maintain the best scientific 
guidance for the drilling. 
Petroleum geology is geology applied 
to the problems of the petroleum in- 
dustry which in turn is devoted to the 
service of man. The industry is pre- 
pared to spend unlimited amounts of 
money and effort to maintain discov- 
ery, and the foundation of discovery is 
geology. ‘There is scarcely a phase of 
the science of geology that does not 
find an application. What began on 
the part of the oil industry as a half- 
hearted use of surface structural map- 
ping has now developed into great geo- 
logical organizations, equipped with 
enormous research facilities and utiliz- 
ing a wide variety of principles of geol- 
ogy, physics, chemistry, and engineer- 
ing. ‘The broad front on which petro- 
leum geology has developed is signifi- 
cant, for it adds powerful support to 
fundamental research—that phase of 
geology to which we in The Geological 
Society are especially committed. 
Finally, I like the idea expressed by 
Doctor Conant,” president of Harvard 
University, when, after defining a 
“scholar” as ‘“‘including all those who 
are endeavoring to be original thinkers 
in any field of learning,” he states that 
“a scholar’s activities should have rel- 
evance to the immediate future of our 
civilization.” The problem of an ade- 
quate supply of mineral resources—not 
only petroleum but other mineral sub- 
stances as well—is surely a part of the 
immediate future of our civilization. 
You and I, who may be called scholars 
attempting to do original thinking in 
the field of geology, might well heed 
his admonition. Such thinking is, in- 
deed, high-level geology. It is a field 
in which the scholars of The Geological 
Society of America have played a vital 
part in the past and are needed more 
than ever in the future. 
2 Conant, James B., The American com- 
munity of scholars. Address delivered at the 
inauguration of Arthur Holly Compton as 
Chancellor of Washington University, St. 
Louis, Mo., February 22, 1946. 
