244 THE EARTH OR ROCK OILS OF AMERICA. 



In case of need, the stalks would furnish a large amount of good food 

 for cattle. They are full of leaves which are very nutritive, and whether 

 cut and dried for winter, or eaten green by stock turned on the ground 

 where they grow, would be veiy valuable in case of deficiency of grass. 



Messrs. Van Eppes employ twenty or thirty hands during the summer ; 

 and in autumn, when the brush is being gathered and prepared, they have 

 about a hundred, male and female. They are mostly Germans, who come 

 with their families during the broom-corn harvest, and leave when this 

 is over. The manufacture of brooms is carried on mostly in the winter 

 season. The quantity usually turned out by Messrs. Van Eppes is 200,000 

 dozen per annum. 



THE EARTH OR ROCK OILS OF AMERICA. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Attention has recently been very prominently directed to the natural 

 wells of crude petroleum, or rock oil, which have been found to yield so 

 abundantly a valuable commercial product in several of the States of North 

 America. The supply of animal and vegetable oil, large as it has 

 become, is yet inadequate to the increasing demand for manufacturing 

 and domestic uses ; hence, attention has been lately turned to coal and other 

 mineral oils. This new discovery promises to exercise a most important 

 influence in adding to the wealth of America, and also in improving the 

 traffic of the several lines of railway over which it has to be transported. 

 The only question regarding the worth of the discoveries seems now to 

 relate to the probable permanence of the yield. If the experience in this 

 respect should be satisfactory, the annual money value of the article is 

 likely to rival that of some of the richest branches of existing industry. 

 The railway fines which seem at present to be most interested in the 

 matter are — first, the Atlantic and Great Western, a new road which 

 connects with the New York and Erie ; and, secondly, the Great Western 

 of Canada, several wells having been found on the flats of the Thames, 

 about a mile from Bothwell station on that fine. The springs or wells from 

 which earth oils may be obtained are more generally diffused in the 

 United States than is, perhaps, supposed. Commercially it is now procured 

 in New York, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In Texas, 

 Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, and even on 

 the banks of the Mackenzie river, springs of naphtha have been found. It 

 was long collected for sale from the Seneca lake, in New York, by the 

 Indians, and sold under the name of Genesee or Seneca oil. 



In the town of Lodi, Seneca county, bitumen escapes with the water out 

 of the shale. This mineral also arises from the vegetable matter or coal in 

 the shale being destroyed. The decay is a process analogous to what heat 



