142 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
THE ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM. 
BY COL. C. C. GRANT. 
Pead before the Geological Section of the Hamilton Scientific 
Association, March 27, 1903. 
The alleged discovery of what is usually called “ rock oil ” 
ina portion of the city of Dublin, situated on what was former- 
ly peat or bog, led to the erfquiry: Could petroleum occur un- 
der the conditions mentioned ? 
While the writer entertains doubts regarding the discovery 
indicated, he does not for an instant question that vegetable 
matter, as well as animal, under peculiar circumstances may he 
responsible for the genesis of petroleum, etc. 
The substance in question was obtained by subjecting coal 
(mineralized vegetable matter) to slow heat, distillation, by an 
English chemist, a year or so after the writer entered the army. 
Subsequently bituminous shale was treated in the same way, 
and the result was similar. The experiments mentioned led 
many to assert positively at this early stage that petroleum 
originated from the buried masses of sea plants which were 
subjected to heat and pressure in past geological ages. This 
may be true as regards some formations, but undoubtedly not 
all. 
The writer attended a lecture given by an American gen- 
tleman in London, Ont., who was interested in the oil wells dis- 
covered near the city. He may have erroneously attributed 
its production to the accumulation of vast quantities of sea- 
weeds heaped together in bays or basins in the Devonian rocks. 
A Scotchman present remarked, “ We have no such accumula- 
tion of vegetable matter in the present seas as could produce the 
petroleum of Enniskillen and Bothwell.” 
This gentleman had in view the shores bordering his na- 
tive land, forgetting that for ages sea-weeds had been collected 
