PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS IN NEW YORK 423 



discovery. It is true that an oil field of somewhat doubtful 

 horizon and of rather insignificant production had already been 

 developed in northwestern Ontario. The productive rock had 

 been referred by Dr T. S. Hunt to the lower Devonian, and though 

 this determination was questioned, the doubt was directed to a 

 lower rather than a higher horizon, but no great weight was 

 assigned to this oil field, so that the inclusion of the Trenton 

 limestone among the productive oil rocks of the country came 

 with a shock of surprise to both the scientific and the practical 

 men interested in this question. The discovery carried the pro- 

 ductive horizons of oil down several thousands of feet in vertical 

 descent and enlarged the superficial area of possibly productive 

 territory many fold. In fact, it transformed almost the entire 

 area of the eastern United States into possible oil territory, so 

 far as its range of rocks is concerned. The only regions excluded 

 would be the Archaean district of New England, the Adirondack 

 highlands, and the eastern or Blue Ridge portion of the Appa- 

 lachian mountain system. 



The Trenton limestone is by far the most widespread of any 

 of the great sheets of stratified rock that make up this side 

 of the continent and when it was recognized as a possible oil 

 rock it carried over almost the entire country into this category. 



Since 1884-85, the date of the discovery above named, one of 

 the most important gas fields of the United States has been 

 developed in the Trenton limestone of Ohio and Indiana, in re- 

 gions where it lies 900 to 1200 feet below the surface and in 

 the same region at a slightly greater depth one of the most 

 important oil fields of the world has been brought to light, a 

 field in which scores of six inch wells have each produced more 

 than 100,000 barrels of oil, while single wells have passed the 

 200,000 barrel mark. The production of flowing wells has in 

 many cases been at a rate of 10,000 barrels a day, and gas 

 has flowed out from wells of the same size to the measured 

 amount of ten, twenty and even thirty million feet a day. 

 Entire farms have yielded oil to the amount of several thousand 

 barrels to the acre. The initial rock pressure of the gas was 

 between 400 and 500 pounds to the square inch in certain por- 

 tions of the field. A total production of fifteen to twenty million 



