V [Assembly 
Mr. Storke, one of the engineers on the Buffalo and Erie rail-road, 
obligingly furnished me with the height of several points in the vicinity 
of Fredonia, from which seme conclusions can be drawn concerning the 
thickness of the strata which are impregnated with this bituminous 
matter. 
It will be recollected that the gas issues through the strata of slate 
which form the bed of Lake Erie, as at Van Buren harbour. 
The slate on the bank of the Canadawa creek, at Fredonia, through 
which the carburetted hydrogen issues, is a hundred and twenty-seven 
feet above the level of the lake. 
The Laona sandstone quarry, the rocks of which contain petroleum, 
and have a strong bituminous odour, is two hundred and forty one feet • 
above the level of the lake. 
The gas spring, four and a half miles southeast of Fredonia, is four 
hundred and eighty-one feet above the level of the lake. 
On the west branch of the Canadawa creek, six miles south of Fre- 
donia, at the height of six hundred and seventy-four feet above the level 
of the lake, the same slate occurs. 
Three miles northeast of Jamestown, at the height of nine hundred 
and twenty-six feet above the level of the lake, is a quarry of sandstone. 
' The strata of sandstone and slate are, therefore, ascertained to be 
nearly a thousand feet in thickness. 
Extending the computation to the other strata through which this gas 
is evolved, we find it at Albany upwards of four hundred feet below 
the surface, or about three hundred and seventy feet below tide issuing 
through slate. 
At Vernon, in Oneida county, through the red sandstone, nearly 
four hundred feet above tide. 
At Gasport, six and a half miles east of Lockport, through lime- 
stone, nearly five hundred feet above tide. 
If Lake Erie is five hundred and sixty- five feet above tide, we have 
this same gas issuing from strata from fifteen hundred to two thousand 
feet in thickness, and not less than four hundred miles in extent. 
