416 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



account for at least the Pennsylvania petroleum. This source 

 of heat he finds in the rise of temperature attending metamor- 

 phism and developed by the elevation of the Appalachian moun- 

 tain system. He says: " Bitumens are not products of the high 

 temperatures and violent action of voleanos, but of the slow 

 and gentle changes at low temperatures, due to metamorphic 

 action on strata buried at immense depths." 



Both of these theories are open to the objection that they 

 use the term distillation in a different sense from that which 

 it regularly holds. It is a technical word and has a definite 

 meaning, but this meaning is ignored by both of the authors 

 named. Newberry speaks of " low temperatures ", evidently im- 

 plying conditions either normal, or not far from normal and as 

 still in progress. Peckham declares that " it is not likely that 

 the usual form of destructive distillation as illustrated in a gas 

 retort has obtained anywhere in the operations of nature." 

 [Proceedings, American philosophical society, 1898] 



To speak of distillation as going forward without a coke resi- 

 due and at low or ordinary temperatures is pure assumption. 

 For such a process we find no warrant in science. It is a matter 

 of inference pure and simple. We find certain rocks with oil 

 and gas which closely resemble the products of the dry distilla- 

 tion of organic bodies and we infer that the latter are due to a 

 process that we choose to call by the same name, and we talk 

 vaguely of time being exchanged for temperature as if the main- 

 tenance of a temperature of 100° for thousands of years could be 

 made to do the work of a temperature of 1000° for a 

 shorter time. All this may be true but there is no scientific 

 demonstration of it. This distillation theory stands on very 

 much the same basis as Hunt's theory of the primary decompo- 

 sition of organic matter into the petroliferous series. The sup- 

 posed facts adduced in support of it do not appear to stand 

 examination. 



The great difference between these two classes of theories 

 seems to be that they assign very different dates for the origin 

 of the petroleum found in the rocks. Hunt's view would refer 

 it to the date of the formation of the rocks, the organic matter 

 of which would be at once transformed into the permanent shape 

 which we find in petroleum. 



