The record of natural gas in this country is not so complete as that of petroleum, but we learn that an important gas spring was known in West Bloomfleld, N.Y., seventy years ago. In 1864 a well was sunk to a depth of three hundred feet upon that vein, from which a sufficient supply of gas was obtained to illuminate and heat the city of Rochester (twenty-five miles distant), it was supposed. But the pipes which were laid for that purpose, being of wood, were unfitted to withstand the pressure, in consequence of which the scheme was abandoned; but gas from that well is now in use as an illuminant and as fuel both in the town of West Bloomfield and at Honeoye Falls. The village of Fredonia, N.Y., has been using natural gas in lighting the streets for thirty years or there about. On Big Sewickley Creek, in Westmoreland County, Pa., natural gas was used for evaporating water in the manufacture of salt thirty years ago, and gas is still issuing at the same place. Natural gas has been in use in several localities in eastern Ohio for twenty-five years, and the wells are flowing as vigorously as when first known. It has also been in use in West Virginia for a quarter of a century, as well as in the petroleum region of western Pennsylvania, where it has long been utilized in generating steam for drilling oil wells. In 1826 the _American Journal of Science_ contained a letter from Dr. S.P. Hildreth, who, in writing of the products of the Muskingum (Ohio) Valley, said: "They have sunk two wells, which are now more than four hundred feet in depth; one of them affords a very strong and pure salt water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or, as it is vulgarly called, 'Seneka oil,' and besides is so subject to such tremendous explosions of gas, as to force out all the water and afford nothing but gas for several days, that they make little or no salt." The value of the foregoing references is to be found in the testimony they offer as to the duration of the supply of natural gas. Whether we look to the eternal flaming fissures of the Caucasus, or to New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there is much to encourage the belief that the flow of natural gas may be, like the production of petroleum, increased rather than diminished by the draughts made upon it. Petroleum, instead of diminishing in quantity by the millions of barrels drawn from western Pennsylvania in the last quarter of a century, seems to increase, greater wells being known in 1884 than in any previous year, and prices having fallen from two dollars per bottle for "Seneka oil" to sixty cents per barrel for the same article under the name of crude petroleum. Hence we may assume that, as new pipe-lines are laid, the supply of natural gas available for use in the great manufacturing district of Pittsburg and vicinity will be increased, and the price of this fuel diminished in a corresponding ratio.