282 ON THE TKANSMUTATION OF ROCKS, &c., 



in common with Prof. Rogers, and declares that if coal is the 

 sole origin of the oil (call it by what name you like) then such 

 a hypothesis involves conclusions so extraordinary, that it must 

 be abandoned. 



He takes for his test the Isle of Zante, where petroleum has 

 been known for more than 2300 years, and which must have 

 furnished an annual supply of 22,643 avoirdupois tons English 

 (23,000,000 kil.). Reichenbach acknowledges that in every quin- 

 tal there are twenty ounces of oil, and therefore there must be 

 at least 368,000,000 of quintals (each being equal to 1 cwt. 3 

 qrs. 25 Ibs. E.) to produce the petroleum of Zante alone. 



Herodotus is the first person who mentions it, and from his 

 time to this, the quantity of petroleum has been sufficiently great 

 to require more coal than the whole of England could have 

 supplied if obtained for the purpose. 



This, however, is but the -^th of the supply of naptha from 

 Rangoon, which, according to Mr. Coxe, produces 92,781 tuns 

 a year. 



The author then refers to Trinidad, and to the " rivers of oil'* 

 flowing up along the Alleghanies and in Pennsylvania, and in 

 Ohio. This calculation, he rightly assumes to overbear all theory 

 and hypothesis. 



M. Virlet, in his work (Dictionnaire Pitioresque des Sciences 

 Naturelles), says the origin of bitumen in general is not due to 

 the transmutation of organic debris, but to eruptions by 

 emanations, which in penetrating sandstones, shales and lime- 

 stones, of all countries, has modified them in its own way. 



Whatever may be the real origin of these fluids they are 

 certainly of different kinds in composition. This is also 

 certain, that the brown Cannels of Scotland do produce oil by 

 distillation, and we have here near Hartley a brown cannel allied 

 to but not exactly identical with the Bog-head Scotch cannel, 

 which, though of true Carboniferous age, contains a high per- 

 centage of mineral oil. I believe the oil will be found to exist in 

 cells. I have, elsewhere,* very recently shown that I was the first 



* The reference is to a paper " On the Coal Fields" in the Catalogue of 

 Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales, exhibited by the 



