E. B. Andrews on Petroleum in its Geological Relations. 35 
from 30° to 60°. Without having made any instrumental meas- 
urements I have estimated the thickness of these strata at about 
eight hundred feet. C gives the position of strata lying within 
what is popularly called “ the break.” These rocks belong to 
the Cae al-measures and have been more or less flexed by 
lateral pressure. It is in these middle rocks that the most valu- 
' able wells of West Men urs are now being obtained. Wells 
bored in the rocks A, A, have been failures as also the wells 
bored in B, B. The rocks B, B, appear to have been lifted up 
bodily, and in such a way as s not to have been much fissured. 
The advantages of the inner strata, marked C, as oil-producing 
- rocks, are: first, they are bent and more or less fissured ; secon 
they are many hundred feet lower in he series than the strata at 
A, A, and are consequently so much nearer the equivalents of 
the supposed sources of oil in the Dev Coan rocks of Western 
Pennsylvania and Canada; and third, this local disturbance of 
the rocks doubtless involves in its many fissures these underly- 
ing Devonian strata, and thus has. given every opportunity for 
the generation of oil and its upward ascent. 
reasonably infer that the oil found along this line is of the same 
i by geologieally as the oil obtained in the upper Devonian 
ocks of Venango Co., Pa. Thus far the oil obtained within 
this double fracture has been found very near the inner edges of 
ee: os on the gone iG "The Voreanie Oil Co, and the 
West Va. Oil and Oil Land Co. own large areas of land within 
the “breaks.” The “ Mount’s Farm” and other companies own 
smaller tracts . 
T cannot but regard the term “voleanic” as infelicitous when 
applied to this region. Nothing is more sensitive to heat than 
petroleum, and direct igneous action adequate to the work of 
uplifting and dislocating the strata to this extent would, I think, 
have driven off all the oil. The uplifted strata at C (fig. 2) con- 
tain seams of bituminous and cannel coal which possess the nor- 
mal and average quantity of bitumen, There is, to my mind, a° 
much better and more scientific explanation of this disturbance, 
