No. 161.] 
195 
oil had been taken from it for several days, showing that the quan- 
tity was very inconsiderable, which the sluggish nature of the pool 
fully indicated, there being no perceptible discharge. The smell 
was evident but at a very short distance from the pool. The oil 
is much used by the farmers, and we were told met with a ready 
sale. 
The hill which rises near the spring is composed of fine grain- 
ed, greenish sandstone, containing a few spirifers and encrinites 
and the corallines, or fucoides, so characteristic of those border 
counties. Several excavations have been made in the hill, in the 
expectation of finding coal, on the supposition that the oil spring 
originated from a bed of coal, none of which were successful, as 
we were told, and which the rocks and the fragments thrown out 
of the excavations fully confirmed. We were, however, inform- 
ed, that a very recent discovery of coal had been made in the hill, 
but all traces of the place concealed, in consequence of being In- 
dian property. 
There is no necessary connection between oil springs and beds 
of coal; the presence merely of bituminous matter disseminated in 
the rock, accompanied by decomposing pyrites, suffices to account 
for its presence, or a depth at some former period, sufficient to 
give the required temperature necessary to disengage the petrole- 
um from bituminous matter. So small, however, is the quantity 
that is obtained from the spring, that its presence there may be 
owing to the passage of water through the underlying rock, where 
a greater accumulation of petroleum may exist than exists in the 
rock of the hill, as the lower rock at Angelica, Hinsdale, West- 
field, shore of Lake Erie and Fredonia; for in all these localities, 
the presence of petroleum is manifested by percussion or fracture 
of the rock. 
CoaL It is not attempted, by any geologist of note, to restrict 
coal to any particular period, but to assign to a particular period 
the greater development and greater accumulation of its mate- 
rial, than existed prior or subsequent thereto. This position is 
fully sustained by observation in New-York, for throughout almost 
the whole series of its transition rocks, both anthracite and bitu- 
minous coal, have numerous localities; but so far as observation has 
been made, invariably in quantities too small for useful or econo- 
mical purposes. The same fact exists in Europe, in the rocks more 
