b 
304 CONTRIBUTIONS TO ECONOMIC GEOLOGY, 1902. [bull. 213. 
other irregular but more or less extensive bodies of the solid bitu- 
mens in the region of Mores Landing, 7 miles west of Santa Barbara. 
A material in many ways resembling gilsonite was found as a minute 
pocket in the sandstone, but the mass of the bitumen is of the solid 
variety, mixed with 20 to 40 per cent of clastic material. Twelve 
miles east of this occurrence is the important petroleum-producing 
region of Summerland. Pleistocene or Recent sands have been heav-1 
ily charged with bitumen at Carpinteria, 12 miles east of Santa Bar- i 
bara. They have been for the most part removed, but the continuous | ,' 
flow of maltha in the floor of the quarry would quickly impregnate an .. 
equal body were the excavation to be filled with fresh sand from the | 
adjoining ocean beach. 
Surficial deposits of brea are well distributed over the United 
States. Those observed by the writer were in Indian Territory, 
Wyoming, and California, the first no longer increasing from active 
springs, the others still forming. The source of their malthas is 
naturally extremely varied. In addition to the above, there are doubt- 
less many others of but little less importance scattered through the 
oil regions of the country. 
ORIGIN OF THE DEPOSITS. 
The origin of the hydrocarbons and bituminous compounds may be 
traced, the writer believes, to petroleum. This is a natural inference 
from chemical relations. The fact that there may be a wide variation 
in the composition and physical aspect of the bitumens, whether of 
asphaltites or of sandstones, matters not, for important differences 
are found in petroleums themselves ; the variation in the asphaltites, 
indeed, may be somewhat more marked, for in Die passage from 
petroleum to its derivatives the process may have stopped at any 
point, with a corresponding development of physical as well as chem- 
ical distinctions. But in the geologic investigation of the asphaltites, 
bituminous sandstones, and related materials the view of their origin 
suggested by chemistry has in many ways been reenforced. The 
asphaltic earths, and solid bitumens in part, are frequently associated 
with active petroleum springs, or are found in regions renowned as 
oil producing. The sandstones and limestones are found resting upon 
formations conspicuous for their yield at other points; indeed, in one 
instance they were found upon a formation actively yielding oil directly 
beneath them, and this at the present day. The sandstones, therefore, 
can hardly be regarded other than as storage reservoirs for the oil 
thus received; the limestones, it is sometimes thought, may have been 
the locus of origin as well as of storage. 
The asphaltites and closely associated hydrocarbons — ozocerite, for 
example— can hardly have been derived otherwise than by the draining 
of petroleum pools or strata richly saturated with oil. In the case of 
gilsonite, the absence of every trace of petroleum in the inclosing sand- 
