124. 



KNOWLEDGE 



[June 1. 1898. 



scattered by hundreds all down the Irish coast, was a bold 

 mass of the same age as the Monrnes and Arran, and 

 became almost destroyed by the severities of glacial times. 

 In any case, we can now follow out the line along which 

 granite intruded in Eocene times, from the south of 

 Carhngford Lough to the smooth Red Hills of Skye. Aa 

 yet denudation has discovered only the higher knobs, the 

 fine-grained and the drusy surface-layers, of the great bar 

 of crystalline rock that has here been added to the crust. 

 Some day, perhaps, on the rising edge of Europe, the whcfle 

 axis may become revealed, worn and rounded into one long 

 moorland, extending north and south for two hundred and 

 twenty miles. 



Granites of Cainozoio age are naturally seldom met with, 

 owing to the depth at which such rocks consolidate. It 

 would be interesting to compare with the Mourne granite 

 that described by M. Chofifat from Cintra in the west of 

 Portugal,* which penetrates Upper .Jurassic strata, and 

 which is probably of Eocene age. The granite of Elba is 

 actually later than the Eocene ; and, in the elevated 

 regions of the Western Alps, which have been severely 

 attacked by denudation, the central gaeissic-granice may 

 even belong to the Pliocene period. 



We have already! pointed to the great north-and-south 

 line, along which materials were erupted in Cainozoic 

 times in Western Europe, as being possibly connected 

 with the movements that determined our present con- 

 tinental edge. Certain it is that the signs of unrest 

 spread eastward, and, by the close of the Miocene period, 

 the central plateau of France, the brown-coal region of 

 Bohemia, the fringe of the Hungarian plain, and the whole 

 north-west of Italy, had already become involved. Then 

 the great Alpine series of chains rose in their full vigour, 

 and the volcanoes of Auvergne, Catalonia, the Eifel, and 

 the eastern Ebinelands, piled up the cones that remiin, 

 scarcely denuded, at the present day. The Italian region, 

 down to the sea between Sicily and Tunis, is still active 

 and unstable ; and, when compared with these vigorous 

 manifestations, the land of Mourne assumes quite a cold 

 and ancient aspect. The great lava-plateaux to the north 

 of it were probably broken up and partly submerged by the 

 forces that were raising Central Europe;; and the bold 

 attempt at western elevation, which allowed of the accent 

 of the granite of the Mournes, seems to have ended merely 

 in weakening the crust and in enlarging the bounds of the 

 Atlantic. 



THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY. 



By George T. Holloway, assoc. r.c.s. (lond.), f.i.c. 



ALTHOUGH the use of petroleum and its products, 

 on what may be called a commercial scale, has 

 only arisen within the last forty years, crude 

 petroleum has been known and used from the 

 earliest times. The " everlasting fire " of the 

 Guebers, or fire worshippers of Baku, was fed by natural 

 gas — really only the most volatile of the products of crude 

 petroleum ; but the most important of the early uses of 

 this " rock oil " was for medicinal purposes— mainly skin 

 diseases — for which purpose its value is even now recog- 

 nized by the medical profession. 



• See De Lapparent, " Traitfe de Geologie," 3me ed., p. 1457. 



t Knowlbdqe, Vol. XX., p. 209 ; also Vol. XXI., p. 77. 



X See the striking remarks of Sir A. Geikie on subsidence between 

 the Inner Hebrides and Iceland, in " The Tertiary BasiltPlateaux 

 of North-West Europe," Quarterly Journal Qeoloaical Society., Vol. 

 LII. (1896), pp. 399-405. 



Numerous references to petroleum occur in the Scriptures, 

 and, in the opinion of Lord Playfaur, the " word translated 

 as ' salt ' in reference to its loss of savour on exposure, 

 should have been rendered ' petroleum,' which, in the air, 

 loses its more volatile constituents, and leaves asphalte, 

 good only to be ' trodden under foot of men.' " 



Petroleum appears to have been collected and sold at 

 Baku, in Russia, and in the Burmese Empire earlier than 

 in other districts ; however, its exploitation on a large 

 scale may be considered to date from the year 1859, when 

 the celebrated " Colonel " Drake, acting on behalf of the 

 Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, sank the first well 

 drilled avowedly in pursuit of oil, at Oil Creek in Penn- 

 sylvania. The hilarity which the public had previously 

 indulged in immediately gave place to the "oil fever" 

 when this well was found to yield to the pump twenty-five 

 barrels of oil in a single day. Rapid development ensued 

 down Oil Creek and along the AUeghany River, so that the 

 output of two thousand barrels, each of forty-two American 

 gallons, with which 1850 was credited, had risen to five 

 hundred thousand barrels in 18G0, and over two million 

 barrels in 18G1. Since then the yield has steadily 

 increased, almost without any setback, until now the United 

 States production amounts to over forty-seven million 

 barrels. 



The earher wells yielded their oil only to the pump, but, 

 in the summer of 18G1, a well drilled to a deptb of four 

 hundred and sixty feet discharged its oil under pressure 

 at the rate of three hundred barrels daily. This was 

 followed by numerous other flowing or " spouting " wells, 

 deUvering, in some cases, as much as three thousand 

 barrels daily, thus keenly acsentuating the oil fever, which 

 became so intense that the drilhng of a successful well in 

 a new district was the signal for a rush of prospectors, 

 and, in case of further success, soon gave birth to a sub- 

 stantial town, which, when the oilfield became exhausted, 

 might vanish as quickly as it had grown up. 



A typical instanca is found in Pithole City, which, about 

 nine months after the discovery of oil, in January, 1865, 

 had in its vicinity a population of batween twelve and 

 sixteen thousand, and, in importance, ranked but little 

 below the flourishing town of Pittsburg. Within two years 

 of its origin, however, its oil was practically all removed, 

 and the founders deserted it in favour of numerous other 

 fields which had meanwhile been developed. 



In Russia the petroleum industry is of much greater 

 antiquity than in the United States, and oil is said to have 

 been exported from that country as early as the tenth 

 century. The oil occurs in certain localities in much 

 larger quantity than in the States, and is more cheaply 

 produced ; indeed, there is no doubt that the Russian 

 industry will be flourishing when the American oilfields 

 have been practically denuded of their contents, although, 

 at present, the business ability, the enormous capital, and 

 the perfect organization of the Americans, enable them to 

 command the principal markets of the world. 



The " spouting " wells of Russia entirely eclipse those 

 of America in output. The first was struck in 1873 by 

 the Kalify Company of Biku, and was followed by many 

 others, the oil of most of them, as in the case of the 

 American oil fountains, being wasted on account of lack of 

 storage tanks to receive the sudden and enormous dis- 

 charges. The most celebrated oil fountain known, although 

 not the largest, was the "Droojba" well, which was struck 

 on the 1st of September, 1883, and commenced flowing 

 at the rate of about one million eight hundred thousand 

 gallons daily, an amount of oil which was valued at eleven 

 thousand pounds. The oil rushed from the well in a 

 column about eighteen inches in diameter and nearly three 



