As already mentioned, the total oil transported to-day by the American pipe-line system exceeds half a million barrels daily. The lines themselves--all laid, of course, below ground--are so unobtrusive and do their work so quietly and unseen, that they attract no attention, and yet they are vastly important to not only the business of the States, but to those myriads of consumers abroad. It is, in fact, impossible to over-estimate the importance of this up-to-date system of oil transportation in the United States as it exists to-day. To show the impossibility of conducting the present-day American petroleum industry without the use of pipe-lines, let me give a few facts. The large oil-tank cars, which are not unusual sights on our railways, hold, at the maximum, about 25 tons of oil. Excluding California altogether from these illustrations, the half-a-million barrels of oil which are transported daily in the States by pipe-lines would fill over 2,500 tank cars. Taking 25 cars to make up a freight train, it would require fully 100 trains daily to transport the oil that now goes by pipe-line, and inasmuch as it is estimated that the oil on the average is transported overland (or, rather, under-land) 1,000 miles, it would require, approximately, 200,000 railroad tank cars to do the daily work in connection with the transport of oil in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, for the average movement of tank cars is 30 miles daily, and all empty cars must be returned. No less than 8,000 railroad engines would be required to do this work, which, on the face of it, is a railway impossibility. I am afraid I have devoted more space to the question of pipe-line transport in the States than the confines of this little work warrants, but the subject is one of great interest to all who would know the magnitude of the organization which is comprised in the limits of the petroleum industry. The United States, however, is but one of the large oil-producing countries where the pipe-line system for the land transport of oil has become the backbone of transport. In Russia, for instance, the fields of production are situated hundreds of miles from the exporting ports, and, following upon the principles which obtain in the United States, the pipe-line system had, perforce, to be adopted. In this respect, however, Russia has still a great deal to learn from our Western friends, and the conservative policy which permeated the Russian Empire as a whole has precluded the making of much headway.