390 I'RANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 



known that peat fuel has been manufactured in Europe for many years. But my 

 attention has been called to a process for the extraction of fuel-oil from peat, 

 which has been tried experimentally in London, and is now about to be launched 

 on a commercial scale, utilising our own peat deposits, like those of Lanarkshire 

 and Yorkshire. 



The peat is submitted to low-temperature distillation at ordinary pressure, 

 or at a slight negative pressure, the highest temperature reached being about 

 600° C. From a ton of Lanarkshire peat, after the moisture is reduced to 

 25 per cent., 40 gallons of crude oil, 18 to 20 lbs. of ammonium sulphate, about 

 the same quantity of paraffin wax, 30 to 33 per cent, of coke, and 5,000 to 

 6,000 cubic feet of combustible gas are obtained. The coke is said to be of 

 very good quality. By the same process it is hoped to get satisfactory results 

 from the lignites of Bovey Tracey. 



Considering the rapid development of oil as fuel, and its supreme indus- 

 trial importance in many other ways, it is remarkable that British geologists 

 should have given such little attention to the origin and occurrence of petroleum. 

 Among American geologists a lively interest in this subject has been aroused and 

 a voluminous technical literature is already published. And yet the fact 

 remains that we are still in a cloud of uncertainty as to this vital question, 

 upon the solution of which depends whether the prospector of the future is to 

 work by hazard or on scientific and reasoned lines. 



Mr. Murray Stuart, now of the Indian Geological Survey, offered in 1910" 

 a simple explanation of the occurrence of petroleum, based upon his own observa- 

 tions in Burma, a research which seems to have attracted far more attention in 

 America than in this country. He showed that the oil of the streams and 

 swamps in Burma is carried, down to the bottom of the water in small globules 

 by adhering tiny particles of mud. Thus there is formed a deposit of mud 

 containing globules of oil and saturated with water. If subsequently this 

 deposit is covered by a bed of sand, the oil and part of the water, as the 

 pressure of overlying sediment increases, are squeezed into the sand, so that by a 

 repetition of the process a petroliferous series of clays and sands may be 

 accumulated. In examining lately a large quantity of "the well-known ' land- 

 scape marble ' from the Ehsetic of Bristol, I obtained from it small but appre- 

 ciable amounts of petroleum ; and towards the end of my investigation I was 

 pleased to discover that I was in thorough agreement as to the origin of this 

 curious landscape structure with Mr. Beeby Thompson, whose research was pub- 

 lished more than twenty years ago.^° In these thin deposits of hydrocarbons 

 among laminated silts, with their striking tree-like growths and hummocky 

 surfaces, may we not have, in miniature, an illustration of the deposition and 

 partial migration of petroleum which occurs on so vast a scale in the oilfields of 

 the world ? 



It is not suggested that all petroleum deposits have had such an origin. I 

 am convinced, however, that in all geological ages such sedimentary accumula- 

 tions have oc3urred ; and that, except where the conditions of cover have been 

 favourable for its imprisonment, the oil is, and has been throughout geological 

 time, incessantly escaping at the surface. Thus we may conceive the earth as 

 continuously sweating out these stores of oil, either in the liquid or gaseous 

 form, especially where rocks are being folded and rapidly denuded. 



It is sometimes asked whether the adoption of mineral oil as a power- 

 producer is likely to supplant coal, and thereby seriously reduce the output of 

 that mineral. The world's yield of petroleum will doubtless go on increasing at 

 a very great rate ; but from the experience gained in some of the fields in the 

 United States and Eastern Canada, it seems unlikely that this increase can con- 

 tinue for a very long period. Practically complete exhaustion of the world's 

 supply is to be looked for within 100 years, says one authority." Even if the 

 output rose to ten times the present yield, it would represent only about half th'6 

 present world output of coal, and it is practically certain that so high a yield of 



" Sec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xl., 1910, pp. 320-333: 'The Sedimentary 

 Deposition of Oil.' 



'' Q.J.G.S. 1894, pp. 393-410. 



" H. S. Jevons, British Coal Trade, 1915, p. 710. 



