The new international encyclopaedia . A. A town of Lambton County,southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated on abranch of the Grand Trunk Railroad, 10 mileseast of the Saint Clair River. In the neighbor-hofjd are numerous oil wells producing yearlyabout 20,000 barrels of crude petroleum. Popu-lation, in , 4357; in 1901, 4135. PETROLEUM (ML., rock oil). A naturalrock oil composed of hydrocarbons. It is classedwith natural gas and asphalt as a bitumen; nat-ural gas containing the more volatile members ofthe series, asphalt the solid, while petroleum iscomposed chiefly of the liquid members, al
The new international encyclopaedia . A. A town of Lambton County,southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated on abranch of the Grand Trunk Railroad, 10 mileseast of the Saint Clair River. In the neighbor-hofjd are numerous oil wells producing yearlyabout 20,000 barrels of crude petroleum. Popu-lation, in , 4357; in 1901, 4135. PETROLEUM (ML., rock oil). A naturalrock oil composed of hydrocarbons. It is classedwith natural gas and asphalt as a bitumen; nat-ural gas containing the more volatile members ofthe series, asphalt the solid, while petroleum iscomposed chiefly of the liquid members, althoughit contains a small proportion of both solid andgaseous compounds. Other names for petroleumare mineral oil, rock oil, and naphtha, the lastbeing employed especially in Europe for the Rus-sian oils. History. Petroleum has long been known invarious parts of the world by its appearance in theform of bituminous springs or as a floating scumon the surface of pools. It was used at a veryearly period in the walls of Babylon and Nine-. PETBOLEUM. 665 PETROLEUM. veh, and Herodotus has described the occurrencent oil springs in tlie island of Zaehynthus, nowZantc. In Konian times petroleum was obtainedfrom Sicily and burned in lamps. The first men-tion of petroleum in America (about 1U35) is ina letter written by the Franciscan missionary -Jo->eph de la Koche dAllion, who refers tlierein tosprings found in the region of what is now south-western Xew York or nortlnvestern early settlers of Pennsjlvania obtained smiiUquantities of oil bj digging wells and scoopingout the liquid which seeped in from the surround-ing rocks. The drilling of brine wells on thewestern slopes of the Alleghanies in the earljpart of the nineteenth century led to the discoveryof petroleum at greater depths. A well sunk nearBurkesville, in 1829, yielded great quan-tities of oil, which flowed to the surface and wasdrained into the Cumberland River, where at onetime it was set on fire.
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