Am.  Jour.  Pharm,  1 
April,  1886.  ; 
The  Origin  of  Petroleum. 
193 
Professor  Mendelej  eft's  views,  as  the  chief  advocate  of  the  inorganic 
theory. 
Mendelejeff"  states,  that  if  petroleum  is  really  of  organic  origin  we 
ought  to  find  in  the  strata  from  which  it  is  said  to  originate  an  enor- 
mous quantity  of  carbon  residues.  Now.  he  says,  this  is  precisely 
what  we  do  not  find  either  in  the  Silurian  limestones,  the  Devonian 
strata  or  in  the  Petroliferous  sands,  from  the  latter  of  which  we  now 
obtain  the  oil.  Again  in  Eussia,  in  the  Caucasus,  we  generally  find 
petroleum  in  the  midst  of  the  Tertiary  formations,  which  are  relatively 
of  recent  origin.  Now,  in  order  to  prove  the  truth  of  the  organic 
theory,  he  says,  we  are  asked  to  suppose  that  the  petroleum  of  these 
strata  has  been  formed  at  the  expense  of  organic  remains  either  of  the 
Tertiary  period  or  of  more  ancient  periods,  of  which  the  remains  lie 
below.  But,  he  says,  this  hypothesis  is  no  more  admissible,  for  we 
cannot  find  the  primary  matter  that  has  been  able  to  furnish  a  like 
quantity  of  petroleum  and  no  carbon  residues.  Now,  he  says,  no  one 
can  suppose  that  petroleum  has  an  organic  origin,  whilst  this  origin  is 
not  explainable  by  the  presence  of  an  enormous  quantity  of  organic 
remains.  Otherwise  it  would  be  necessary  to  admit  what  is  impossi- 
ble, namely,  that  the  distillate  has  remained,  whilst  the  solid  residues 
have  disappeared.  He  states  that  his  own  personal  researches  in  the 
petroleum  regions  of  the  United  States  and  the  Caucasus  lead  him  to 
seek  the  place  of  original  formation  of  petroleum  at  such  depths  in 
the  interior  of  the  earth,  as  to  place  the  question  of  organism  or  or- 
ganic origin  out  of  the  question  entirely,  and  the  fact,  he  says,  which 
pleads  most  in  favor  of  this  view,  is  the  existence  of  the  seat  of  the 
petroleum  nearly  always  in  the  neighborhood  of  mountain  chains.  In 
Pennsylvania,  the  AUeghanies  are  to  the  petroleum  regions  there  what 
the  Caucasus  mountains  are  to  the  regions  of  petroleum  in  the  Baku 
district.  Again  the  next  most  prolific  producing  country  is  Galicia, 
in  which  the  wells  are  most  numerous  close  to  the  Carpathian  mount- 
ains. It  is  also  a  curious  fact  that  the  geographical  distribution  of 
the  sources  of  petroleum  takes  the  course  of  a  broken  but  straight 
line. 
This  direction,  so  well-known  to  American  producers,  is  parallel 
with  the  direction  of  the  chain  of  mountains.  This  is  why  the  Amer- 
icans speak  of  a  subterranean  river  of  petroleum  and  of  subterranean 
lakes  formed  by  its  overflow.  This  geographical  direction,  Mendelejeft' 
states,  is  irrefutable.    From  Bradford,  (Penn.)  and  Oil  City  far  away 
