Scientific Intelligence—Geology. 369 
In the present state of knowledge, therefore, the rocks below the 
coal, produce about four times as much liquid and coagulated bitumen 
as the carboniferous strata, and one quarter more than all the rocks 
above the Devonian. The mica slate, serpentine, and magnesian beds, 
explored by Mr Taylor in Cuba, are doubtless the equivalent of the 
Azoic system of Lake Superior, and older than the Potsdam sand- 
stone. Mr Taylor regards all the bitumen of the West India Islands, 
including the Pitch Lake of Trinidad, as belonging to the same age. 
In the mine of Consualidad, near Havana, he found asphaltum in 
a vein or fissure of the metamorphic rock, which, at the bottom of 
the shaft, attained the thickness of 9 feet. On the Tapaste, and on 
the Matanzas road, he saw it in the same rocks, in still greater masses, 
whose dimensions had been penetrated more than 100 feet, without 
finding the sides. In those islands, asphaltum rises to the surface 
from beneath the sea, after volcanic action has been experienced. 
The great lake of Trinidad, 3 miles in circumference, he considers 
as supplied from the rocks of the same age, as those he inspected 
around Havana. The specimens observed by Mr Logan on the east 
coast of Lake Superior, were in rocks doubtless not newer than the 
Potsdam. Those streams of naphtha seen by Humboldt issuing 
from mica slate, in the Gulf of Cariaco, in Venezuela, were without 
doubt flowing from the most ancient rocks, and the same may be 
said of the gneiss containing iron, in Scandinavia, in which liquid 
bitumen is found. Everything points to an early, a very ancient 
existence of bitumen, both solid and liquid, in the rocky strata of our 
planet. 
Was it not as ancient as any of the compound substances com- 
prising. these strata. 
The systems composed of magnesian slates, magnetic iron ore, 
mica slate, and magnesian limestone, which are so well developed 
on Lake Superior, in Missouri, and in Sweden, are older than most 
of the granites. Rocks that are apparently of the same age, or at 
least’ more ancient than any traces of animal or vegetable life in 
Cuba, in Scandinavia, and in Canada, contain bitumen. 
This assertion has not, it is true, a perfectly incontestable basis 
whereon to rest, but a reasonably good foundation, approaching to a 
mathematical demonstration. Aside from the facts here presented, 
the assertion is not theoretically a strange or startling one. 
The components, or simple substances of which bitumen is consti- 
tuted, existed from the earliest creation. Oxygen must have been 
in existence as early as the metals; otherwise they would be found 
pure, and in the form of alloys, and not of oxides. We must suppose 
that there was iron ore, lime, silica, magnesia, and other oxides, al- 
kalies and earths, as soon as there was calcium or silicium. 
Oxygen gas, which constitutes about one-fourth of the mass of the 
globe, must have been primeval. Are not chlorine, sulphur, nitrogen, 
VOL. LVII. NO. CXIV.—OCTOBER 1854. Pag 
