PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 505 



when we come to distil the coal, they will each make an oil of various 

 chemical proportions, and what is very singular, coal that has a quantity 

 of hydrogen in it, cannot be found in distillation. So, when we come to 

 petroleum, it is the same, each differing from the other. The oil from the 

 Ohio river differs from that of the Kiskiminitas, and these will be entirely 

 different from the petroleum found in California. We know that beech 

 wood makes a different product than that from seaweed, and that resin is 

 different from beech wood; and then coming down to particulars, so that 

 a chemical botanist could readily tell the different products from the differ- 

 ent kinds of wood, so let us come down to the theory that petroleum is a 

 vegetable production, and that Canada, at the time the resins were formed, 

 had no large forests; we must look for petroleum in some other direc- 

 tion, so we look to the sea, and find a large part of the animals constituting 

 a proportion sufficient to furnish raw matei'ial for this purpose. As we go 

 up in the geological series containing petroleum, we find that the land 

 plants increase; and as we come upward we find the resinous trees just 

 beginning to grow upon the American continent, and also other trees very 

 similar to the palm and cocoa growing here, and we can suppose that the 

 strata which contains iDctroleum consisted of ferns, and, in addition to 

 them, fish and coral, shell fish, and at once can see how every one of the 

 oils in the United States will have some peculiar qualities, and will form 

 a sufficient difference that no two products of distillation will be precisely 

 alike. 



Dr. G. F. J. Colburn. — Would not the oils partake somewhat of the 

 properties of the minerals through which they passed ? 



Dr. Stevens. — Undoubtedly they would; the sulphate of iron is found 

 very largely in petroleum. 



Dr. Colburn, of Newark, presented a chimney for oil lamps, the 

 upper half of which was made of metal to obviate the cracking of the 

 chimneys so common in the glass ones; the upper part is hinged, which, on 

 burning the lamp, can be lighted without removing the lower part, which 

 is of glass; the upper part is connected by a rod to the lower end, that 

 rests on the lamp, to conduct the heat from the upper metal, and thus 

 equalize the temperature. The chimneys can be made for 13 to 16 cents, 

 glass and all. 



Mr. Page exhibited several lamps burning petroleum, Avhich showed the 

 combustion produced by each; some of the lamps burned well without 

 chimneys; they all burned the same quality of oil. Mr. Page said: There 

 was not much progress made in chimneys until about the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, when a German made some experiments and published an account of 

 them. We have no particulars of the English doing anything in this way, 

 but the Germans and French have. In order to make an oil like petroleum 

 burn well, the theory in regard to combustion should be thoroughly under- 

 stood and mathematically correct, such as two and two make four. There 

 is always cause and effect, and the want of this indispensable requisite is 

 the cause of hundreds failing who have spent tlieir hours over the midnight 

 lamp. 



Mr. J. E. Ambrose, of Jersey City, exhibited his hand lamp, to burn wither 

 without a chimney; it can be burned very low without giving any odor. 



