SOMETHING ABOUT OIL. 279 



enterprise had been prosecuted to such an extent that it 

 was regarded as just upon the eve of consummation and 

 fruition. Now the geologist must be called in to puff the 

 enterprise and sell the stock. Alas ! he had the ungrate- 

 ful duty of informing his employer that he had pierced en- 

 tirely through the Corniferous limestone that had cheered 

 him with its aromatic exhalations, and that he had entered 

 the Niagara limestone, and would probably " strike fire" 

 before he " struck oil." To palliate the disappointment, 

 he had to add that the result could positively have been 

 announced in the beginning, without the expenditure of a 

 dollar in boring. This man expended six or eight thou- 

 sand dollars in a most inexcusable and wasteful ignorance 

 of the geological conditions, but yet endeavored to recover 

 half of the moderate geological fee which he had paid to 

 be informed of the hopelessness of his case. 



The Corniferous limestone is extensively distributed 

 throughout the West, and has afforded a wide field for the 

 display of credulity that could not believe the truth, and 

 avarice that could not spend enough in a bootless enter- 

 prise. It stretches in a broad belt from Columbus, in Ohio, 

 northward to near the state line, where it bifurcates, one 

 belt trending northwestward across Northern Indiana and 

 into Southwestern Michigan, passing under Lake Michigan, 

 and curving eastward, so as to reappear in the northern 

 part of the state and form the headlands about Mackinac. 

 The other belt trends northeastward, passing into South- 

 eastern Michigan, beneath the western end of Lake Erie, 

 and reappearing in the neighborhood of Woodstock and 

 London, in Ontario, whence it deflects to the northwest, 

 and passes under the middle of Lake Huron, reappearing 

 in the headlands and islands of Michigan some distance 

 southeast of Mackinac. Throughout nearly this w T hole ex- 

 tent it has been riddled by borers for oil, but to this day 



