482 



NATURE 



{March 21, 1889 



date of Mr. Marvin's book produced 60,000,000 gallons of 

 oil, and the supply showed no sign of decreasing. The 

 waste occasioned by " spouting " is at times enormous ; 

 millions of gallons of oil being lost from the want of any 

 storage accommodation. Occasionally the neighbouring 

 proprietors who happen to have reservoirs empty may 

 thus obtain the oil at a nominal price. On one occasion 

 2,000,000 gallons were sold at about ']\d. per ton. When 

 the Droojba fountain " spouted," the crude article, we are 

 told, altogether lost its value for the moment. 



" Fedoroff filled his reservoirs with 2,800,000 gallons of 

 oil for 300 roubles, or ^30. . . . Thousands of tons were 

 burnt outside the district to get rid of it ; thousands were 

 led towards the Caspian ; huge lakes of oil were formed near 

 the well, and on one occasion the liquid suddenly flowed 

 into a distant engine-house, and but for the promptness 

 of the engineer in extinguishing his petroleum furnace the 

 whole locahty would have been ablaze. Houses were 

 completely buried by the sand cast up by the oil ; all 

 efforts to stop the fountain on the part of Baku experts 

 were fruitless." 



After great exertions on the part of the well owners 

 of the district, the fountain was eventually gagged, 

 but not before 500,000 tons of oil had " spouted," equal 

 to a loss at the current value of American petroleum 

 of upwards of ^1,000,000 sterling. But the record of the 

 Droojba fountain was beaten in 1886, when a single well 

 " spouted " as much as 1 1,000 tons of petroleum per diem ; 

 an amount equal to the aggregate daily yield of the 25,000 

 wells of America, the thousands of wells in Galicia, 

 Roumania, and Burmah, and the shale oil distilleries of 

 Scotland and New South Wales. As a result the market' 

 is now glutted, and the crude oil has been selling at times 

 at the rate of fifty gallons for a penny ! 



We have not space to indicate all the many points of 

 Mr. Marvin's interesting narrative, or to do justice to his 

 account of the economic results which he thinks must 

 inevitably follow from the prodigious source of wealth 

 which Russia possesses in this wonderful district. It 

 must be remembered that petroleum ton for ton is more 

 potent than coal as a source of power. Hundreds of 

 immense floating cisterns driven by petroleum furnaces 

 are carrying this fuel across the Caspian and up the 

 Volga, to be spread throughout Russia and Germany, 

 and along the Baltic coasts. We learn from a recent 

 Consular Report that pipe lines are being laid from Baku 

 to Batoum : the Caspian and Black Sea Naphtha Conduit 

 Company has now been formed, and the line is to be laid 

 within the next four years. The conduit is to have a 

 forked line on the Black Sea, reaching Batoum and Poti, 

 and the capacity of the line is such as to admit of the 

 daily passage of 1,200,000 gallons of naphtha. In a few 

 years, therefore, this petroleum fuel will be scattered 

 along the Mediterranean coasts and through Southern 

 Europe. Possibly we may have it burning in our own 

 Underground Railway before long. Indeed, as Mr. 

 Marvin tells us, we shall surely see the Parsee back 

 again at Baku, not to worship the Everlasting Fire, but 

 for the purpose of buying lamp oil for the bazaars of 

 India. What the eff'ect of this intercourse will be on the 

 future of India time will show. Meanwhile Russia is 

 steadily making her way towards the gates of India, and 

 Tchernayeff's road to Central Asia will be an accom- 



plished fact '•- before many years are past ; and since the 

 discovery of the new springs near the Mervi Kultuk Bay, 

 the railway to Khiva will possess its own supply of fuel. 

 A few days ago Mr. G. Curzon read an interesting paper 

 to the Royal Geographical Society on the Transcaspian 

 Railway, which must have opened many people's eyes 

 to the development of Russia's power in Central Asia. 

 In the meantime what are we doing with the sources of 

 wealth in petroleum which we possess in Upper Burmah ? 

 Along the valley of the Irrawadi, and within 60 miles" 

 of the Rangoon-Prome railway, are enormous deposits of 

 petroleum, probably as copious as those of America, if 

 not so rich as those of Baku, and certainly capable of 

 supplying the whole of India with light and fuel. Perhaps 

 those capitalists who are so eager to rush into the ruby 

 mines of Burmah might more profitably devote their wealth 

 to exploiting the petroleum springs of that country, for 

 it needs not the gift of prophecy to assert that Burmese 

 petroleum in the long run will be certainly more precious 

 than Burmese rubies. 



We can heartily commend Mr. Marvin's book to all 

 who are interested in the Central Asian question, for, as 

 he says in the outset, petroleum is bound to become an 

 important factor in that problem. Hannibal was said to 

 have dissolved the Alps by vinegar. It is far more likely 

 that petroleum will dissolve the sort of Chinese wall that 

 our Governments are feebly setting up to keep the 

 Russian trader and the tchinovnik out of India. 



T. E. Thorpe. 



A TEXT-BOOK OF ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY. 



A Text-book of Elementary Biology. By R. J. Harvey 

 Gibson, M.A., F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Botany, Uni- 

 versity College, Liverpool. (London : Longmans, 

 Green, and Co., 1889.) 



THE above-named work is one of those which, as has 

 been remarked in these pages (vol. xxxviii. p. 52), 

 " the system of examining the whole world on a limited 

 schedule ... is bound to produce," and the essence of 

 it is devoted to a consideration of those type-organisms 

 which the examining body have set down for study. It 

 contains 345 pages small octavo, and is divided into eight 

 chapters, with an introduction. The first three chapters 

 are devoted to generalities, and the last one to a " history 

 of biology." 



The author decries the " evils of the cram system," and 

 proceeds at once to assert that " this must be my apology 

 . . .for the introduction of so many speculations and 

 explanations of casual relationship," while he claims for 

 his treatise the special distinction that it deals " with the 

 relationship of botany to zoology, and of both to the 

 fundamental sciences of physics and chemistry." In 

 fulfilling this determination the author gives, at the 

 outset, a physico-chemical resume. We regard the 

 whole of this as out of place and superfluous, inas- 

 much as University students (for whom the book is 

 written) will, if properly trained, have received the 

 same information in a more tangible and authoritative 

 form, at the hands of Professors of the special subjects. 

 We strongly deprecate this growing tendency towards 

 usurpation of the functions of others, especially when it 



