Abstract
MR, CUNNINGHAM CRAIG has attempted to meet the demand, resulting from the widespread modern interest in petroleum, for a simple text-book of the art of oil finding, and has at least produced a book which is striking and interesting. The opening sentences at once arrest attention, for, unlike his predecessors who have regarded the origin of petroleum as an interesting academic question, having little bearing on its present distribution or the search for productive areas, he starts off with the assertion that it absorbs and includes nearly every other question as to the occurrence, distribution, and winning of oil. His first care, therefore, is to deal with this question in no uncertain tones; for him petroleum is produced by a metamorphosis from the accumulated debris of land vegetation, which has become buried by sediment and undergone a transformation analagous to, though differing from, that which has given rise to beds of coal; and the association of salt with petroleum, so constant that it has been regarded by most other writers as causal, becomes for him a mere accidental coincidence.
Oil-Finding: an Introduction to the Geological Study of Petroleum.
By E. H. Cunningham Craig. With an Introduction by Sir Boverton Redwood, Bart. Pp. xi+195. (London: Edward Arnold, 1912.) Price 8s. 6d. net.
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Oil-Finding: an Introduction to the Geological Study of Petroleum . Nature 89, 580 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/089580b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/089580b0