The most remarkable instance exemplifying the benefit of their use to be met with, I find in Taylor's Hand-book

of Petroleum, for the year 1884.' Independent of its interest in this connection, the author gives a most graphic

description of the successful drilling of the greatest "gusher"

ever opened on this continent.

"October 27, 1884.

Those who stood at the brick school-house and telegraph offices in the Thorn Creek district to-day and saw the Semple, Boyd & Amstrong, No. 2, torpedoed, gazed upon the grandest scene ever witnessed in oildom. When the shot took effect, and the barren rock, as if smitten by the rod of Moses, poured forth its torrent of oil, it was such a magnificent and awful spectacle that no painter's brush or poet's pen could do it justice. Men familiar with the wonderful sights of the oil country were struck dumb with astonishment, as they gazed upon this mighty display of Nature's forces. There was no sudden reaction after the torpedo was exploded. A column of water rose eight or ten feet, and then fell back again, and some time elasped before the force of the explosion emptied the hole, and the burnt glycerine, mud, and sand rushed up in the derrick in a black stream; the blackness gradually changed to yellow; then, with a mighty roar, the gas burst forth with a deafening noise; it was like the thunderbolt set free. For a moment the cloud of gas hid the derrick from sight, and then, as this cleared away, a solid golden column half a foot in diameter shot from the derrick floor eighty feet through the air, till it broke in fragments on the crown pulley, and fell in a shower of yellow rain for rods around. For over an hour that grand column of oil, rushing swifter than any torrent, and straight as a mountain pine, united derrick floor and top. In a few moments

the ground around the derrick was covered several inches deep with petroleum. The branches of the oak trees were like huge yellow plumes, and a stream as large as a man's body ran down the hill to the road, where it filled the space beneath the small bridge at that place, and continuing down the hill through the woods beyond, spread out upon the flats where the Johnson Well is. In two hours these flats were covered with a flood of oil. The hill-side was as if a yellow freshet had passed over it; heavy clouds of gas, almost obscuring the derrick, hung low in the woods, and still that mighty rush of oil continued. Some of those who witnessed it estimated the well to be flowing 500 barrels per hour. Dams were built across the stream, that its production might be estimated; the dams overflowed and were swept away before they could be completed. People living along Thorn Creek packed up their household goods and fled to the hill-sides. The pump station, a mile and a half down the creek, had to extinguish its fires that night, on account of the gas, and all fires around the district were put out. It was literally a flood of oil. It was estimated that the production was 10,000 barrels the first twenty-four hours. The foreman endeavoring to get the tools into the well was overcome by the gas and fell under the bull wheels; he was rescued immediately, and medical aid summoned; he remained unconscious for two hours, but subsequently recovered fully. Several men volunteered to undertake the job of shutting in the largest well ever struck in the oil

region. The packer for the oil-saver was tied on at the bullwheel shaft, the tools placed over the hole and run in. But the pressure of the solid stream of oil against it prevented its going lower, even with the suspended weight of the two thousand pound tools; one thousand pounds additional weight was added before the cap was fitted and the well closed. A casing connection and tubing lines connected the well with a tank."

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURAL GAS, ITS ORIGIN-NATURAL GAS WELLS-CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF NATURAL GAS-NATURAL GAS AS FUEL -PERMANENCY OF SUPPLY-NATURAL GAS AS AN ILLUMINATOR-NATURAL GAS AT PITTSBURGH.

ORIGIN OF NATURAL GAS.

ABOUT as many theories exist respecting the origin of natural gas as have been formed respecting liquid petroleum. It can hardly be said they have a common origin, although a variety of facts which are of easy demonstration point in that direction. The most generally received opinion, however, is that it is a product of the decomposi tion of organic matter deposited most probably in the mud of shallow seas of the Devonian period, and by its own expansibility finding its way through the cracks of superimposed strata, caused by the upheavals thereof familiar to the geologist.

Marsh gas, the chief constituent of "natural gas," being that hydro-carbon which contains the most hydrogen and the least carbon, is the necessary residuum of the abstraction of the carbon from organic matter by some oxidizing agency at a moderately low temperature in the presence of water. There are few, perhaps, who have failed to notice its presence on the surface of stagnant pools, as it collects and forces its way upward in bubbles. If the mud