Lord Coke's dictum about the decrease of quality never had a more spectacular illustration than was given at Oil City and Titusville on Sunday, June 5, 1892. Oil Creek was high with rains. A dam burst and made the creek a flood. Its waters ate away the insufficient foundations of tanks, and rivers of naphtha and gasolene and kerosene overran the river of water for miles. A spark did the rest. Oil refineries took fire, tanks exploded. There were two raging seas--water beneath, fire above. Men, women, children, animals, property were swept along in their intermingled waves. From every overturned tank and blazing refinery fresh streams of oil flowed into the sea of flame, which climbed the hills for the victims the other sea could not reach. Those who escaped drowning breathed in a more dreadful death. It was a volcano and deluge in one. It was one of the most terrible catastrophes of our times. Even the scare-heads of the newspapers could not exaggerate its horrors. The governor of the State made a public appeal for help. The coroner's jury held an inquest at Oil City upon fifty-five bodies at one sitting. It declared the cause of the calamity to have been the gross carelessness of the owners and custodians of a tank of naphtha, in permitting it, while filled with 15,000 barrels of naphtha, to stand without proper protection from fire and water. The tank was shown, by the testimony, to have stood on sand within a few feet of the creek and without safeguard. It was shown that complaints had been made to the managers of the refinery, which was one of the subsidiary companies of the oil trust, about this tank and others before the disaster, but without avail. The coroner's jury laid the blame where it belonged--upon the company whose tank gave way. Its verdict said: "The naphtha which caused this awful destruction of life and property ... was stored in a tank located on the bank of Oil Creek, on the Cornplanter Farm, near McClintockville, where it was built about four years previous to this time. At the time of its construction the tank was from twenty to thirty feet from ordinary high-water mark in the creek, but this distance has been gradually reduced by the action of the water prior to this flood to between six and ten feet, and this flood further washed away the ground up to and under the tank, a distance of from fifteen to twenty feet. A part of the tank bottom, thus being left without support, tore out, allowing the naphtha to escape into the creek. The evidence of the watchman, James Marsh, shows that he realized danger from the undermining of the tank, for he made a feeble effort previous to this flood to protect it by throwing loose stones between the tank and the creek. The jury find from the evidence that all persons owning and having in custody this tank and its contents were guilty of gross carelessness in permitting it, while filled with naphtha, to stand without proper protection from fire and water."