364. THE MINERAL OILS OP AMERICA. 



been largely stimulated, and the increased demand for steam-engines, pumps, 

 barrels, and other inipleruents required for raising the crude oil from the 

 wells, and preparing it for market, has opened new fields for inventive genius, 

 the consequence of which has been that many improved methods have been 

 adopted for producing the oils, effecting an economy both in time and 

 labour. A truly reliable account of the geology of the petroleum regions is 

 much needed. The rationale of the formation of the oil is not yet accurately 

 defined to the unanimous satisfaction of scientific men ; different theories 

 being held in regard to this subject, as is the case with many others. The 

 most natural supposition would be, that it is a distillation of coals conducted 

 in Nature's laboratory, under modified conditions of heat and pressure. This 

 is doubtless correct to some extent, as certain petroleums display such 

 characteristics as to prove their production from bituminised plants ; while 

 at the same time other samples indicate their probable origin from animal 

 tissue by certain unmistakeable evidence. Many of the more recent 

 discoveries of oil-wells have occurred in places hundreds of miles from any 

 known coal-fields, and where it is not possibWfor coal to exist, owing to the 

 peculiar geological character of the country. Thus, oil has been discovered 

 in many parts of Canada, far from the coal formations, and veins have been 

 struck there which yield a most abundant supply. 



"With respect to the history of Coal Oils, it is likewise remarked that 

 the production of oil from coal and petroleum, or rock-oil, having passed 

 through its experimental stages and become an article of commerce, and 

 having assumed a form of utility which commends its use in all localities 

 where gas is not attainable, as well from its illuminating properties as 

 its economy, it bids fair to compete successfully with the production of 

 burning fluid and camphine, and finally to, perhaps, exterminate their 

 manufacture. The first attempt to introduce coal-oil practically to the 

 people of the United States was made by the Kerosene Oil Company, in 

 1857 ; and their efforts in this direction were quickly seconded, by those of 

 the Carbon Oil Company, in December of the same year, by the first intro- 

 duction of oil made from petroleum, for burning in the coal-oil lamps. The 

 beginning thus made has been steadily followed up through some trying 

 fluctuations and depressions, growing partly out of the inferior quality 

 produced, and partly from the fact that the demand speedily outran the 

 supply, and the public discontinued its use in the fall and winter of 1859, 

 from its scarcity, poor quality, and high price. American coals are not well 

 adapted to the production of coal-oil, as the yield of oil is not sufficient to make 

 manufacturing from them profitable, as compared with the greater yield 

 and superior quality of foreign coal — especially that obtained from Scotland 

 and New Brunswick. But this defect Nature has abundantly made up in 

 the great deposit of natural oil The yields of crude oil per ton — of native 

 and foreign coal — is given below ; and in addition to the greater quantity 

 obtained, the imported coal has the advantage of producing an oil 

 much lighter in specific gravity, hence much superior for illuminating 

 purposes :— 



