Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1888. 
The  Origin  of  Petroleum, 
189 
the  advocates  of  the  organic  theory  have  the  advantage,  as  they  chiefly 
rely  for  their  proofs  on  what  is  actually  known  of  the  geological  for- 
mations of  the  earth's  crust,  whilst  the  advocates  of  the  inorganic  theory 
are  compelled  to  ask  you  to  accept  for  their  proofs  the  existence  of  cer- 
tain elements  in  a  particular  condition  in  the  remote  interior  of  tlie 
earth,  to  which  human  effort  has  been  unable  to  penetrate,  and  of 
which,  the  existence  can  only  be  obtained  by  a  purely  deductive 
method  of  reasoning. 
Let  us  then  first  consider  the  theory  of  inorganic  origin.  Who  are 
its  chief  advocates,  and  what  are  their  reasons  ?  In  the  first  place,  I 
may  state  that  until  the  discovery  of  petroleum  in  commercial  quanti- 
ties in  the  United  States  of  America  in  the  year  1859,  very  little  at- 
tention had  previously  been  drawn  to  this  substance,  even  from  a 
purely  scientific  point  of  view  ;  but  soon  after  its  discovery,  as  it  be- 
gan to  increase  in  commercial  importance,  the  cause  of  its  origin 
aroused  the  attention  of  our  savants,  and  we  find  that  in  1866  the 
well-known  French  chemist,  Berthelot,  drew  attention  to  the  subject, 
and  came  forward  as  one  of  the  earliest  advocates  of  the  theory  of 
pure  chemical  origin.  He  wrote  that  if  it  be  admitted  that  the  remote 
interior  of  the  terrestrial  mass  contains  free  alkali  metals,  this  hypo- 
thesis alone  will  furnish  almost  of  necessity  a  method  of  explaining 
the  formation  of  hydrocarbons,  or  carbides  of  hydrogen.  He  found 
by  personal  experiment  that  when  carbonic  acid  and  water,  which  he 
states  everywhere  infiltrate  the  earth's  crust,  come  into  contact  with 
these  alkali  metals  at  a  high  temperature  (such  as  would  be  the  case 
far  in  the  earth's  interior)  acetylides  are  formed.  These  acetylides^ 
subjected  to  the  action  of  vapor  of  water  or  steam,  produce  acetylene, 
and  the  products  of.  the  latter's  condensation  would  form  formenic  car- 
bides or  hydrocarbons  such  as  constitute  American  petroleum.  He 
can,  he  says,  thus  effect  the  production,  by  a  purely  mineral  method,, 
of  all  the  natural  carbides  or  hydrocarbons.  Heat,  water,  the  alkali 
metals,  coupled  with  the  tendency  of  the  carbides  to  unite  to  form 
more  condensed  matters,  are  sufficient  to  account  for  the  complex  mix- 
ture which  we  know  as  petroleum. 
Five  years  later,  viz.,  in  1871,  we  find  another  scientist  of  eminence,, 
a  member  of  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences,  a  Mons.  M.  H.  Byas- 
son,  coming  forward  as  an  advocate  of  the  mineral  theory.  In  a  paper 
published  in  the  Comptes  Rendus,  he  states,  In  a  research  that  cer- 
tain considerations  led  him  to  undertake,  he  had,  by  causing  carbonic 
