Of course the boring of wells has become quite an institution in the oil region, and is carried on with great system. After selecting a site, the first thing in order is the erection of a derrick. This is a frame in the form of a truncated pyramid, about ten feet square at the bottom, and five at the top, having one of its four posts pierced with rounds to answer the purpose of a ladder, by means of which the workmen can ascend and descend. This derrick is from twenty to thirty feet in height, and has at its summit a pulley, by means of which the boring implements are drawn from the well. A pit is then sunk through the earth within the derrick, about six feet square, until the work is interrupted by water. The remaining distance to the rock is reached by driving strong cast-iron pipe by means of a battering ram. This pipe has a caliber of about five inches, with walls of one inch in thickness. It is prepared in joints of about eight feet in length, which are connected together at the point of contact by wrought-iron bands. When the pipe reaches the rock, the earth is removed from its cavity, and the operation of boring is ready to be commenced. Occasionally, however, this driving operation is interrupted by coming upon a huge bowlder. When this is the case, the boring operation is commenced, and a hole made through the bowlder nearly equal in size to the cavity of the pipe, when the driving is resumed, and the pipe made to ream its way through the stone. Sometimes in these operations the pipe is fractured, or turned aside from a perpendicular direction, when the place is abandoned and a new location sought for. The boring implements do not differ materially from those used in sinking artesian wells. As a general thing, bits of two or three sizes are used, the first and smallest of which only has a cutting edge. If the hole to be sunk through the rock is to be four inches in diameter, the bits would be, first, one with a cutting edge two inches in width; secondly, a blunt bit, three inches wide by one inch in thickness; and lastly, by a similar bit four inches wide. These bits have a shank about two feet in length, that is screwed into an auger stem ten or twelve feet in length and about one inch and a half in diameter. Connected with this auger stem is an arrangement called, technically, 'jars'--two elongated loops of iron, working in each other like links in a chain, that serve to jar the bit loose when it sticks fast in the process of boring.