HAWORTH. | Origin of Oil and Gas. 191 
result in voleanic upheavals of greater or less magnitude, de- 
pending upon the nature of the carbides attacked by the water 
and the porosity of the carbides. These factors would de- 
termine the rapidity of the reaction and consequent greater or 
less liberation of heat. 
“Until recently the ideas of geologists concerning the tem- 
perature of the earth have been fixed by the idea that the in- 
ternal heat of the earth was due merely to cooling, and the 
earth student has expected a law of more or less uniform rate 
of increase in temperature with the depth from the surface. 
The accurate measurements of recent times have absolutely 
negatived any uniform rate of cooling, the rate varying sig- 
nificantly with different localities. It is perfectly evident that 
many other chemical reactions due to hydration of minerals, 
and other processes liberating heat, are particularly active in 
one portion of the earth’s crust and not in another; hence the 
phenomenon of geyser action, hot springs, etc.; but the more 
powerful reaction of water with carbides is a more satisfactory 
- solution for vulcanism, and the presence of hydrocarbons in 
volcanic gases is thus most simply explained. | 
“This, in brief, is my own conception of the inorganic theory. 
One observation, made by myself in 1897, and which has since 
been the subject of considerable experimental work by myself 
and others, is that when petroleum traverses finely porous ma- 
terial, such as shales, the petroleum becomes simpler the 
farther it travels; that is, that the more viscous materials are 
left behind. From this point of view, the Pennsylvania petro- 
leum must have traveled far from its original source, and this 
explanation is convincing to myself that Pennsylvania petro- 
leum at least did not originate in Devonian shales. It is easy 
from the inorganic theory to account for such extensive migra- 
tion of oils as come from considerable depths, first through fis- 
sures, then occasionally through the finely divided material, 
so that we have, at the surface, some petroleums, such as Texas 
and California, much in their original condition, and others, 
like those in Pennsylvania and Kansas and in the southern 
Midcontinental field, showing evident results of diffusion be- 
tween their starting-point and the surface. 
“When we note the ease with which petroleum itself diffuses, 
and when we note that it could not possibly remain for any 
time in granitic rocks, where every few feet we find cleavages 
through which petroleum can diffuse with the greatest ease, 
we find in the inorganic idea relief from the almost impossible 
conception that petroleum can have existed in a porous earth’s 
crust since a Lower Silurian time, when we have optical evi- 
dence that it is continually escaping to the atmosphere. The 
essential reason why no accumulations of oil are found in 
igneous rocks is simple in the light of Mrazek’s idea that petro- 
leum accumulations are only possible where the pores of sedi- 
mentary rocks have been sealed by moisture sufficient to make 
