PETROLEUM AND NATURAL OAS IN NEW YORK 



409 



mechanical section of the British association for the advance- 

 ment of science, but this defense revealed such profound and 

 surprising ignorance and misconception of the geologic facts as 

 to the occurrence of petroleum that it necessarily lost weight 

 with all who are familiar with these facts, and must have weak- 

 ened rather than strengthened the theory itself. [For an exami- 

 nation of this defense see Geology of Ohio, Annual report, 1890, 

 p. 61.] A weighty consideration in this connection is found 

 in the geologic distribution of petroleum and its derivatives. 



We can roughly divide the rocks of the earth's crust into two 

 great series, namely, those in which organic remains are more or 

 less abundant, aud those in which no traces of life are found. 

 Their absence in the latter case may be accounted for either be- 

 en use life had not been introduced at the time of their forma- 

 tion, or by reason of metamorphic changes that have supervened 

 since their origin, by which all such traces, if ever present, have 

 been removed. In the last named division, neither petroleum 

 nor any of its derivatives is ever found, and all its occurrences 

 are confined to the fossiliferous division. While Archaean rocks 

 do not cover as large an area as the vast series formed in the 

 ages of life, they are by no means insignificant in extent. 

 2,000,000 square miles in one continuous body are referred to this 

 division in the Canadian protaxis alone; and in the other conti- 

 nental masses a like distribution is recognized. 



A single exception as to the absence of the entire petroliferous 

 series from the Archaean rocks must, however, be made. In 

 a few localities in the uppermost division of this series in On- 

 tario, considerable deposits of an asphalt-like material, thor- 

 oughly compressed and hardened, are found. It can be made to 

 burn only under the most favorable conditions. That the sub- 

 stance originated in petroleum is highly probable, but it is to be 

 borne in mind that the rocks in which it is contained bear un- 

 mistakable evidences of having been originally stratified. If 

 stratified they may have contained the remains of life. But 

 aside from this and probably a few other exceptional cases, 

 petroleum and all the substances derived from it are wholly 

 wanting in the Archaean rocks. There is not an oil field in the 

 world in the rocks of this age. 



