865.] Draper on Petroleum. 53 



engineers' and other men's wages, tools, tubing, coal, &c, is about 

 1,200Z. In addition, a certain allowance must be made for accidents, 

 such as breaking of the boring tools, and difficulties of extracting it. 

 The profits made on the oil are very large, the cost of a barrel of 

 forty-one gallons, including freight to New York, being about 3/., 

 while it may sell for nearly 4Z. The crude oil is worth, at the wells, 

 about 1Z. 10s. a barrel. Of course these prices fluctuate considerably. 

 It is now proposed to conduct the Petroleum in gas pipes to the 

 termini of the railroads, so as to lessen the expense of cartage, which 

 is about 6s. a barrel at present rates. These pipes will have to run 

 distances of from seven to twelve miles. 



The amount of oil sent abroad is continually increasing. Antwerp 

 alone having taken, in the first eight months of 1864, 135,000 barrels 

 of refined and crude. In New York city, a regular Petroleum Board 

 has been established, which is attended by four or five hundred dealers 

 in the article. Up to the present, there have been formed two hundred 

 and fifty companies for the working of these borings, representing a 

 capital of 30,000,000Z. 



The use of Petroleum, or rather certain of its ingredients, as a 

 fuel, has been proposed in the case of steamers making long voyages. 

 The advantages are, of course, sufficiently obvious, decreased bulk as 

 compared with coal, absence of ash, mobility. On the other hand, 

 there are the difficulties of contriving a suitable furnace, and the 

 danger from fire. At the oil wells themselves, for instance, in the 

 Downer Refinery, they are, however, using the refuse of distillation for 

 heating the necessary apparatus, and some of the pumping engines 

 generate steam by the aid of the combustible gas that is so commonly 

 associated with the Petroleum, it only being necessary to conduct it 

 by a pipe from the tanks in which the oil accumulates to the furnace 

 of the engine. 



Besides the discoveries of Petroleum in Western Pennsylvania, to 

 which the preceding statements principally refer, it has also been 

 found in Western Virginia, North-western New York, Ohio, Central 

 Kentucky, Michigan, and Canada. In Michigan, boring is now being 

 conducted at " Burning Spring," a place on Lake Michigan, so named 

 by the Indians, and with every prospect of success. In Western 

 Virginia, the wells do not require to be bored so deeply as in Penn- 

 sylvania. In Ohio and Virginia, the Petroleum is found in the coal 

 measures, and the wells have often to be sunk through these into the 

 sandstones and slates below, before becoming productive. In North- 

 west Pennsylvania, and in New York, the wells are entirely outside 

 of the coal field, and so remote, that one can hardly imagine any con- 

 nection between the two. The strata in which the oil is found dip 

 south, and pass below the coal-measures at least 500 or 600 feet, the 

 nearest coal-bed to the more northern springs occurring on the tops of 

 the highest hills, thirty miles distant. The oil wells in this group 

 are bored through alternating layers of shales and sandstones, and an 

 occasional layer of bluish sandy limestone. The next group, below, 

 is that known as the Hamilton Shales in New York, and in Ohio as the 

 black slate. Dr. Newberry considers this the source that affords the 



