The early efforts of British scientists to develop home supplies of oil from shales and other forms of oil bearing rock were productive of benefits through improved methods of refining, rather than by the development of a really important home industry. Thus the United States and all oil-producing countries owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. James Young of Renfrewshire, Scotland, whose improvements in the processes of manufacturing paraffine from shale oil, during the early part of the nineteenth century, were of infinite value in developing the uses of petroleum after its presence in large quantities was proven by the pioneers of Pennsylvania. Great Britain, realizing her own need, also helped the world’s oil industry when she built the first oil-tank steamers on the River Tyne. Though Great Britain, with the exception of a small well recently drilled, has no deposits of crude so far as known, she is at the present time experimenting with processes to distil petroleum from oil shales, coal, cannel coals, ironstones, lignite and peat; but more important still, she is encouraging the oil industry in various parts of her great Empire. Under the British flag, either as autonomous parts of that Empire or as countries which she holds a mandate to govern, are the important oil-fields in Burma, Persia, Egypt, Trinidad and Assam. The Burma fields have of late years been developed in accordance with modern practice, and the producing area, long a subject of quaint legend, much extended, so that according to recent estimates the annual crude production from this source is upwards of one million tons. The Persian oil fields will be a factor to be reckoned with in future, and an oil port fed by a pipe line on the American model already exists at Abadan on the Persian Gulf. Egypt has also a future as a petroleum producing country, for within the past ten years not only “gushers” but wells which give evidence of steady flowing qualities have been discovered, and plans for development are already well advanced. Crossing to this hemisphere the name of the British colony Trinidad at once suggests itself. Its famous lake of pitch has long been a source of supply for that dense form of petroleum which is known as asphalt; while other deposits of crude yield surprising percentages of more volatile products like motor spirit. And while on the subject of petroleum under the British flag, reference may be made to Canada, although the industry there is very closely allied with that of the United States. In Eastern Canada, oil has long been produced in limited quantities, but within recent years the prospects of great new oil areas in the foothills of the Rocky mountains and extending almost as far north as the Arctic circle have led to glowing hopes that may or may not be realized.