BITUMEN, ASPHALTUM, PETROLEUM, ETC. 



219 



11. One-half to one inch yellow band of fuller's earth. 



12. Bluish sandstone, with impressions of plants. 



The Glossopteris Browniana is found in the above bed of kerosene shale.* 

 The kerosene shale occurs in even lamina?, is quite hard and breaks with 

 a regular conchoidal to splintery fracture, with a shining surface. It is 

 really a rich cannel shale. The Murrurundi Petroleum Oil Cannel Com- 

 pany work this shale, one hundred and thirty miles northwest from J^ew 

 Castle. At this place it is fourteen inches thick, resting on nearly eight 

 feet of coal and clay. The proprietors are E. Towns & Co., of Sidney, who 

 had an exhibition at the Centennial. The 'New South Wales Shale and Oil 

 Company, of Sidney, had on exhibition a block showing the entire thick- 

 ness. They undoubtedly possess the richest seam of kerosene shale; its 

 greatest thickness is five feet, the middle three feet — the richest. They 

 manufacture kerosene, lubricating and other oils from the mineral. The 

 shale from the Hartley mine is shipped by rail eighty miles to the works, 

 near Sidney, and is also exported for gas-making. An important locality 

 is at the foot of Mt. York. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are invested 

 in this industry, and the oil is used for illuminating purposes and gas- 

 making, for which purposes it is chiefly exported to San Francisco, India, 

 China and other places, but its chief exportation is to other Australian colo- 

 nies and New Zealand. There is a slight imjsort duty, but the Kerosene 

 Company have possession of the market and control the trade. The shale 

 yields' 18,000 cubic feet of forty candle, or one hundred and sixty gallons of 

 crude oil per ton, from a three feet two inch seam. On page 56, of Mines 

 and Mineral Statistics of New South Wales is the following table of pro- 

 duction of crude oil: 



YEAR. 



1865 .., 



1866 



1867 



1868 



1869 



1870 



1871 



1872 



1873 



1874 



Tstal 



96,141 



261,414 



At Wollongong extensive works have been established for the manu- 

 facture of oil, and sometime since specimens of shale from Megalong and 

 Illawarra were sent to Prof. Silliman, who applied to them the term Wol- 

 longonite, under the impression that they came from Wollongong. Oil has 

 been made from this, but it does not yield so much oil as the Hartly shale. 



*Mines and Mineral Statistics of New South Wales — Sydney, 1875. . 



