962 
covery well. This matter has, however, been dis- 
cussed in Bulletin 429. G. D. Harris 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
At the risk of presenting a rather personal 
matter, the writer will briefly outline the his- 
tory and cause of his investigations of the 
coastal plain region during the past eighteen 
years in search of deposits of mineral value. 
As early as 1894 he bored with diamond drills 
on Jefferson Island, Belle Isle, Weeks Island 
and Anse La Butte, La., discovering in each 
place a huge mass of rock salt of limited area 
but of great depth. At Jefferson Island pure 
rock salt was penetrated to a depth of twenty- 
one hundred (2,100) feet without finding bot- 
tom, and at Belle Isle rock salt, having a 
depth of twenty-seven hundred and forty 
(2,740) feet (pierced in 1907), was discovered 
with paraffine oil and large lenses of pure sul- 
phur.* 
The successful results attained by his ex- 
plorations in Louisiana led the writer to ex- 
tend the study of a nascent “dome theory ” 
into Texas and to apply it to the various phe- 
nomena occurring on Spindle Top; a low ele- 
vation of only ten to twelve feet above the sur- 
rounding prairie, and to drill finally on this 
dome against the advice of his friends, with 
the well-known result that the largest well 
ever discovered in the United States and 
variously estimated at from 75,000 to 100,- 
000 barrels per day had its birth on the tenth 
day of January, 1901. 
The success of this well demonstrated the 
possibility of attaining economic results by 
drilling for oil, gas and sulphur on the domes 
of the coastal plain. This theory held good 
throughout the hundreds of wells drilled 
around Spindle Top in the effort to extend 
the area laterally without results, however, 
for it was subsequently proved that if the 
original well had been located only sixty-five 
feet further to the northwest there would not 
have been a discovery well. 
1 See ‘‘ Rock Salt in Louisiana,’’ by A. F. Lucas, 
in Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng., 1899, also Jour. 
Ind. and Eng. Chemistry, Vol. 4, No. 2, February, 
1912. 
SCIENCE 
~ [N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 912 
It must be noted that this well was not lo- 
cated on the axis of “the central dome,” 
hence the great risk incurred in its drilling, 
and whoever may claim that this dome theory 
does not apply, and “fools” around the rim 
of the dome, stands a good chance to lose him- 
self in the quagmires of gumbos and the un- 
consolidated sands with which the domes are 
surrounded. This was proved by hundreds of 
wells drilled around the Spindle Top dome, 
not in an effort to prove a theory, but rather 
in the strenuous effort to extend laterally the 
area of the productive territory. The dome 
theory as advanced by the writer in the early 
days of the Spindle Top field to Dr. C. Wil- 
lard Hayes and Professor R. T. Hill, of the 
U. S. Geol. Survey, to Mr. Lee Hager, con- 
sulting geologist, Houston, Texas, Dr. Wm. 
B. Phillips, now director of the Mineral Sur- 
vey, Austin, Texas, and to Mr. Eugene Coste, 
of the Canadian Mining Institute, has been 
generally accepted. 
Mr. Hager, in a letter to the writer, dated 
May 27, 1912, from Houston, Texas, writes as 
follows: 
All of us down here, at least those who know the 
facts, are fully aware that the credit of first bring- 
ing the significance of these coastal domes to the 
attention of the world belongs solely to you, and 
I can not see that there has been any advance 
made upon your ideas even to this day. 
Professor R. T. Hill, in the Jour. of the 
Franklin Inst., Aug. and Oct., 1902, and in 
Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng., Vol. 33, states: 
Before the discovery of Spindle Top there was 
only one man whose ideas—although not yet co- 
ordinated into a theory—approximately fitted the 
observed conditions. Of course I refer to Captain 
Lucas, who, in his explorations of the Coastal 
Plain, seeking successively salt, sulphur and oil, 
had observed the associations of oil, sulphur, sul- 
phuretted hydrogen, gas, gypsum, dolomite and 
salt, constituting collectively what might be termed 
the oil-phenomena representing a group of sec- 
ondary products as distinguished from the mother- 
strata or sediments out of which they have been 
produced. Moreover, so far as I am aware, he 
first pointed out the existence of anticlinal hills 
in the Coast Prairie and their connection with the 
oil-phenomena. . . . Captain Lucas early noted that 
