Although the oil springs or oil wells are not immediately above or below coal seams, they are all within “measurable distance” of great coal formations—the oil territory of Pennsylvania is, in fact, surrounded by coal, some of it anthracite, which is really a coke, such as would be produced if we artificially distilled the hydrocarbons from coal, and then compressed the residue, as the anthracite has certainly been pressed by the strata resting upon it. The rocks in immediate contact and proximity to coal seams—“the coal measures,” as they are called—are mostly porous, some of them very porous, and thus if at any period of the earth’s long history a seam of coal became heated, as we know so many strata are, and have been heated, a mineral oil would certainly be formed, would first permeate the porous rocks as vapor, then be condensed and make its way through them, following their “dip” or inclination until it reached a barrier such as the limestone forms. It would thus in after-ages be found, not among the coal where it was formed, but at the limestone or other impermeable rock by which its further percolation was arrested. This is just where it actually is found. Limestone, although not porous like shales and sandstones, is specially well adapted for storing large subterranean accumulations, on account of the great cavities to which it is liable. Nearly all the caverns in this country, in Ireland where they abound, in America, and other parts of the world, are in limestone rocks; they are especially abundant in the “carboniferous limestone” which underlies the coal measures, and this is explained by the fact that limestone may be dissolved by rain-water that has oozed through vegetable soil or has soaked fallen leaves or other vegetable matter, and thereby become saturated with carbonic acid. Where the petroleum finds a crevice leading to such cavities it must creep through it and fill the space, thereby forming one of the underground reservoirs supplying those pumping wells that have yielded such abundance for a while and then become dry. But if this theory is correct it does not follow that the drying of such a well proves a final stoppage of the supply, for if the cavity and crevice are left, more oil may ooze into the crevice and flow into the cavity, and this may continue again and again throughout the whole oil district so long as the surrounding feeders of permeable strata continue saturated, or nearly so. The magnitude of these feeding grounds may far exceed that of the district wherein the springs occur, or where profitable wells may be sunk, seeing that the localizing of profitable supply depends mainly on the stoppage of further oozing away by the action of the impermeable barrier.