IMMOBILITY IN THE GEOLOGICAL SCALE. 95 
I have already recognized the obvious fact that in a homogeneous and 
permeable formation there must always be the movement that gravity 
would cause in separating at different levels the oil, gas, and salt water 
contained in it. Such differentiating movement would of course go on 
when oil rocks are, by the warping of the crust, bent into low arches or 
monoclines. Oil rocks also rise to day in natural outcrops, and more or 
less movement of their contents is rendered possible and necessary in 
this way. There are also numberless fractures and faults beside, by 
which the contents of porous rocks can reach the surface. The “ surface 
indications ” of gas and oil, of which we hear so much, are principally 
due to these last-named facts. Characteristic examples of such fractures 
are found in the Pennsylvania and Ohio fields; but sound observation 
seems to show that every deeply buried oil and gas rock is, in a normal 
state, hermetically sealed, and no communication in the vertical scale is 
possible between the porous rocks of a single section. 
For the establishment of this probability I must again draw upon the 
experience that has been accumulated in New_York within the last few 
years. In Oswego and Onondaga counties, of this state, natural gas has 
been found in large volume in wells drilled into the Trenton limestone. 
Near Baldwinsville, Onondaga county, the Monroe well was drilled in 
the late autumn of 1896. It reached the surface of the Trenton lime- 
stone at 2,250 feet. Ata depth of 120 feet in this stratum a vigorous gas 
vein was struck, the rock pressure of which reached the amazing figure 
of 1,525 pounds to the square inch. I read for myself in August last a 
pressure of 1,370 pounds to the square inch on the gauge of this well 
after its gas supply had been drawn steadily upon for four months. 
A rock pressure of 1,500 pounds to the square inch stands for, nay, 
demands, a hermetic seal. Think of ita moment! If there had been 
a drill to go down 150 years ago, when northern New York was still cov- 
ered with the primeval forest, the same pressure would have been found 
here; if when Columbus discovered the New World, 400 years ago, it 
would have been the same; the same when the Christian era was begun, 
1,900 years ago, by the birth of the babe in Bethlehem; the same when 
Romulus and Remus were herding their flocks on the seven hills of 
Rome; the same when the Pharaohs were quarrying the nummulite 
limestones out of which the pyramids were built. Can even the sem- 
blance of a reason be given why the pressure should have been any less 
when the nummulites were growing in the Tertiary seas? 
All the events and epochs which I have named are “ but as yesterday 
when it is past and as a watch in the night” compared with the ages that 
have gone by since the petroleum from which the gas was derived was 
stored in the Trenton limestone of northern New York. 
