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Show deepest Ills " ILLEp.S. Holes Being Bored to a Depth of 8000 Feet Near Pittsburg, Pa. Project Will Shed Light on Possibilities for Oil in Deeper Sands. WAirrVGTOX, I). C., Aug. 1C During tup. ki-,1, f.-w yr-.-irs tho Hope Natural Ciis i-onip:inv anil the People's Natural flas oumpauy, both of Pitts-liur.g. Pitts-liur.g. Pa., haw! l.een drilling deep wells in , northern West Virginia and soutll-we'st.ern soutll-we'st.ern Pennsylvania to find deeper oiI;l, earing and gas-bearing sands, thtdr ohjeet being to reach, if possible. the horizon of the rich Clinton saint of Ohio, which, according to Dr. I. C. Utile, the state g.-oiogist of West Virginia, Vir-ginia, should be found iu this region at 'depths .between 701)0 and S0O0 feet. Drill for Deep Oil and Gas. ' The first exceptionally deep well thus 1 drijled, the K. A. Geary well, of tho People's Natural Gas company, is nbwut four miles northwest ot McDon-nh McDon-nh Pa., Had about twenty miles south-1 south-1 w.-st of Pittsburg. The mouth of tho uc.ll is about, loot) feet above sea level. The well penetrates tho Gordon stray sand, the last of the usual gas sards in his region, at a depth of 1971 feet. Previa this point to a depth of (j 700 feet the strata penetrated are alternated alter-nated "lime" and "slate," and from 730 'feet to the bottom, 7JI-S i'eet, they are;" "sand" and "lime," interspersed with about sixty feet of rock salt. Tho seflund deep well was drilled by the Hope Natural Gas company on tho far!m of M. O. 0 o if. about eight miles northeast of Clarksburg, in northern West Virginia. Its mouth is 5 16-1 feet feet above sea level. The well begins 20i) feet, below tho level of tho Pitts-.burg Pitts-.burg coal and penetrates the usual oil-bearing oil-bearing ami gas-bearing sands, the lowest, low-est, bemg the Davanl, which lies at a depth of 22 1 0 feet. The strata in the remainder of the well are alternately "lime" and "slate." The third deep well, the .1. If. Lake, of the Hope Natural Gas company, is nbout eight miles southeast of Fairmont, YV. Va. It is about twenty miles north of the Guff well and about sixty miles south of the Gearv well. The mouth of the well is about 1.100 feet above sea level. The Bayard sand, the lowest of the gas sands, was found in this well it n depth of 2050 feet. Tho remaining, remain-ing, strata are alternately " liine, " ' ' stato " and " sand. ; ' Deepest Wells in World Named. Named in order of depth, the four deepest wells in the world are the Lake, 7."i7il.feet; tho Goff, TeSli; a well at Czuehow, Germany, 71-18; and the I Gentry, 72-1 S. Tho "two deepest wells iu the v-orld aro therefore tho Lake and the '.Golf, the Lake surpassing the German" Ger-man" well by the large margin of 211 i feet- In comparison with these great depths, other depths reached by wells or mines sunk in the crust of the earth are rather insignificant. The deepest minii in 'the world is shaft No. 3 of the r Tamarack mine, in Houghton t'ouniv, Mich., which lias reached a depth" of 52"0 feet. Other shafts of ! the Tamarack company and of the Calumet Calu-met j& Hecla mine, in the Lake Su-! Su-! pcrior region, reach depths between -lOOOi and ' 5000 feet. Three shafts in tho j'rizbram silver mines, in Austria, liHve. reached depths of about 3100 feet. The N'ictoria quartz mine, at Bendigo, Australia, is 43' 0 feet deep. A number num-ber of shafts in the Transvaal gold region of South Africa have been sunk to donths of about 4000 feet. Mine and Well Depths Limited. The depth to which a mining shaft can be sunk is limited by the heat of the rocks, as the temperature at a dqpth of a mile in nearly till parts of ttie earth is so high that, workmen cannot can-not live in it, even with ventilation. The depth to which a "well six inches in diameter can 'tie drilled seems to depend de-pend chiefly ou skill iu drilling and strength of eable. The cable itself is heavy, and besides carrying its own weight and the weight of a drill, which weighs one or two tons, it must bear strains produced by vertical movements of he drill, which may be so great as to break it at any moment, so that theTdrill and a part of the cable may be lodged in the well iu such a way that tlu- cannot be removed. Kxeeptioual skill is required, therefore, in operating the. ponderous machinery used in drilling;! drill-ing;! well. The drill, which is a column of fcteel about five inches in diameter ami forty or fifty feet long, beveled to a Y-shaped edge at the lower end, is attached to one end of the eable, and at some other point, determined by the driller, the cable is attached to a long j be:ixn. which is operated in tho same niauuer as the walking beam of a steam- boat. Merelv to lift the drill through : the; height determined by the swing of thoioud of the walking beam and to let i it drop repeatedlv would do no drilling. ; In -order to drill, oscillations must be induced in the cable, such as those set j up in- attaching a light weight to a sus-; sus-; penued rubber band. A slight oscilla-' j tion properly induced by the finger at i the upper end of the rubber band will ' produce a very large oscillatiou of the , weignt attached to its lower end. In i soi:ie such way as this the skillful driller drill-er produces oscillations in the drill bit. ! which throw the sharp beveled edge of the, drill on the rock with high voloeitv. : Tlui onlv means the driller has of knowing', know-ing', the beha ior of the drill is the general behavior of tlu1 machinery and ; thei flight impulses or tremors in the calde, which he detects by his hand ii lone. The information obtained from drill holes carried to great depths is of ex- Is a fossil ocean, imprisoned since mid-Paleozoic mid-Paleozoic time. Interesting evidence in regard to the geologic history of the formations was obtained by Charles Butts of tho United States geological survey, who identified a number, of fossils fos-sils from depths of 71S7 to 7355 feet in the Goff well. The material from the Lake well has not yet been fully examined. It may be possible by examining ex-amining the fossils to determine the geologic ages and horizons of the beds penetrated and so to estimate the depth at which the .Clinton sand should lie beneath the bottom of this well. The well probably does not pass through more than one-half the total thickness of sediments in this region. ceptional economic and scientific importance. impor-tance. Although the wells drilled by the Hope Natural Gas company and the People 's Natural Gas company have not yet reached the coal sought a depth of 8000 feet they have, nevertheless, come within 421 feet of the goal, and incidentally they have established the fact that no valuable deposits of oil exist in the immediate vicinity of the wells at depths somewhat greater than 7000 feet. What's in Interior of Earth? The materials and the conditions in the interior of the earth have long been a favorite subject of speculation among scientific men. According to the modern mathematical theory of the propagation of earthquake waves through the earth the outer rocky shell of the earth, which is about two and one-half times as heavy as water, extends ex-tends to a depth of less than 1000 miles. Inside of this shell is some material, probably metallic, which is more than five times as heavy as water. Estimates Esti-mates of the temperature at the center cen-ter of this nucleus range from 3000 degrees de-grees to 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but these figures have little or no value, for mathematicians have not yet found tho law of the distribution of temperature tempera-ture from the surface to the center of the earth. The temperature evidently increases with the depth, a fact again confirmed by an elaborate series of observations ob-servations of temperature made in each of the three deep wells, the Gearv, the Goff, and the Lake, by C. E. Van Ors-trand Ors-trand of the t'nited States geological survey, department of the interior. In each of these wells the temperature at a depth of 100 feet is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and gradually rises with increase in depth, reaching 142.0 degrees de-grees in the Gearv well at a depth of 610(1 feet, 159.3 degrees in the Goff well at a depth of 7310 feet, and 168.6 degrees in the Lake well at a depth of 7500 feet. The observation at a depth of 750O feet in the .Lake well was made at the deepest point yet reached by any i observer. Unexplained Enormous Heat. The source of the enormous quantity of heat stored iu the interior of the earth is not known. iome writers think this hoat is due to the disintegration of radium in the rocks, others think that the earth is a cooling globe, radiating ra-diating heat developed during condensation conden-sation from the original nebula, and others think that it is due to various causes, such as radioactivity, chemical reactions, impacts from meteorites, or : condensation from nebulous material. The st rata of lime, slate and sand penetrated by those deep .wells were originally sediments deposited from ocean water. A bed of ocean water was nctuallv found in the Gearv well at a depth of 6250 feet. Dr. I. C. White, stnto geologist of "West Virginia, with whom the t'nited States eolocieal survey sur-vey is co-operating in these investigations, investiga-tions, i.s of the opinion that this water |