60 ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 



ingston, McLean and Madison are among those in which such 

 discoveries have been made. 



The only localities in this State where productive gas wells 

 have been obtained in the stratified rocks are Litchfield, in 

 Montgomery county, and in a well but just completed at Beards- 

 town, on the Illinois river. The discovery at Litchfield was 

 made in 1879, by the Litchfield Coal Co., of which Mr. H. H. 

 Beach is President. -It was made in a boring at the bottom of 

 their coal shaft, carried down to the depth of 168 feet below 

 the coal seam mined at that point, and the gas was encoun- 

 tered in a light colored sandstone, about 100 feet below coal 

 No. 1. No attempt was made to develop this gas deposit for 

 several years after its discovery by the Litchfield Coal Co., but 

 eventually a company was formed for the purpose of de- 

 veloping the oil and gas deposits of Montgomery county, under 

 the name of "The Litchfield Oil, Gas, and Fuel Company," and 

 at the commencement of the current year sixteen wells had been 

 sunk there, three of which were productive in gas, and three in 

 oil. 



The productive wells are all on a nearly north and south line, 

 and those sunk on either side of this line, though but a short 

 distance from it, failed to prove productive. This fact indicates 

 the existence of an anticlinal, and the probable fracture of the 

 lower strata thus permitting the gas to rise to the sandstone 

 in which it is found. Hence the formation in which the gas is 

 generated cannot be certainly determined, and may be either of 

 Lower Carboniferous, Devonian or Silurian age. 



The boring at Olney, the deepest one hitherto reported in 

 Southern Illinois, produced no gas, although carried down about 

 seven hundred feet below the base of the coal measures, and two 

 thousand feet below the surface.* It probably did not reach 

 Devonian strata, and therefore affords no evidence for deter- 

 mining whether or not the Devonian and Silurian rocks will 

 afford productive gas wells in Southern Illinois. 



The Litchfield Oil, Gas and Fuel Company have succeeded in 

 introducing gas as fuel in many of the dwellings in Litchfield, 



*The record of this boring may be fotmd on page 8, of Vol. VII, of these reports. 



