BITUMEN, ASPEALTUM, PETROLEUM, ETC 217 



The well on McCaiisland .farm, Lafayette county, was bored about 800 

 feet for oil, and after much attendant expense was abandoned. Bitumen 

 here occurs in the upper sandstone of the Lower Coal measures. We know 

 of oil and tar springs in Cass and Johnston, but in these counties people 

 have wisely abstained from expensive search. 



On Mormon fork, in Bates county, a well has been bored about 700 feet 

 deep, but developed but little oil, although it proved of interest to the geolo" 

 gist and searcher for coal in proving the existence of two thick coal beds. 



South of Butler, Bates county, is found a limestone with small cavities 

 previously occupied by fossils, now filled with bitumen, and on Mulberry 

 creek we find a four foot bed of very bituminous limestone. A similar rock 

 is also occasionally found on the Little Osage river andMarmaton river near 

 Fort Scott, and has been called Fort Scott marble, but is too hard to polish 

 ever to be of much economic use. 



On Shiloh creek, Yernon county, there is a small spring of clear water, 

 but having a strong taste of petroleum. 



In the southern part of Vernon and the northern part of Barton several 

 wells have been sunk in search of petroleum. Many of the rocks of this 

 district are so strongly saturated as to be quite black and are often quite 

 tough from the cementing power of the bitumen, and some of the limestone 

 beds, where convenient for transportation, may yet prove of value as mate- 

 rial for street paving. In Europe such rocks are preferred. 



Nearly all the coal and many of the rocks of Southwest Missouri, Avhen 

 freshly broken, give out an odor of bitumen. Bitumen is often quite abund- 

 ant in the lead mines of Jas23er county, intimately associated with the min- 

 eral. 



OTHER BITUMINOUS ROCKS. 



Certain thinly laminated rocks, ordinaril}^ termed shales, or slates, occur 

 in the TJtica slate of the Lower silurian system, as wells as the Marcellus 

 and Grennessee of the Devonian rocks of Canada and New York. It is well 

 known that similar beds are of frequent occurrence in our coal measures in 

 every State where coal is found. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt has appropriately 

 termed them "pyroschists," and defines'them to be argillaceous rocks con- 

 taining, in a state of admixture, a brownish insoluble and infusible hydro- 

 carbonaceous matter, altered to lignite or coal. Some of these strata con- 

 tain, in the absence of oil wells, sufficient oil to distil for illuminating pur- 

 poses. 



There are thirteen bituminous shale beds in the Illinois coal field aggre- 

 grating thirty-four feet thickness.* In Missouri our estimate is twenty- 

 one beds, with an aggregate of thirty-nine feet. This in a thickness of nearly 

 2,000 feet of coal measures. A few of these blend into a cannel coal, for in- 

 stance certain beds in Johnson county and the Breckenridge coal of Ken- 

 tucky. From the latter there was formerly distilled a good quality of illu- 



*I11. Geol. Kep., Vol. vi. 



