attempted. He imported first-class machinery and skilled workmen; but the Poles combined against the interloper, and refused to supply his refinery with crude oil, so for a while he actually was driven to import crude petroleum from America. The people finding that be could not be crushed, desisted from their opposition, and the American refiner now works in peace. He estimates the annual production of Galicia at a hundred thousand barrels, but its quality is generally very inferior to that of Pennsylvania; the sinking of the wells is attended with far greater difficulty, owing to the loose character of the soil, and the singular manner in which the rock strata are found tossed about at every conceivable angle. It is also necessary to bore to a far greater depth than in America. But the chief disadvantage of Galician oil is its liability to explosion, owing to the extreme difficulty of separating the benzine and other explosive elements from the illuminating oil. Altogether Galician oil does not sound very desirable.
In Roumania, in the districts of Bacan, Serata, Buzen, and Dambovitza, petroleum has recently been discovered in such large quantities that there is every prospect of its developing into a very important industry. Prussian Saxony has already established extensive bituminous shale-works, for the supply of shale-oil, in the neighborhood of Weissenfels. Wallachia, Sweden, and Switzerland, also possess deposits of bituminous asphalt, which when systematically worked will, doubtless, be turned to good account.
For a moment let us glance at the principal sources of animal and vegetable oil-supply, ere the fountains of mineral oil were revealed for the use and comfort of the human family.
First and foremost, of course, ranked the fish-oils—the well-known train (or drain) oil which drained from the blubber of the great Greenland whale (a large whale sometimes yielding fully thirty tons of blubber—each ton representing nearly two hundred gallons of oil. Though the cachalot, or sperm-whale, could never rival the Greenland whale in the quantity of its contribution, it had at least the advantage of quality and variety, since, besides ordinary blubber, it yields a large amount of sperm-oil, and also of spermaceti. Of the latter valuable product, the head alone often yields ten barrels.
Next among oil-yielding fish come the grampus, or dolphin, the porpoise, the shark, the seal, the cod, the herring, and others.
Of animal fats are butter, tallow, lard, goose-grease, neat's-foot oil (prepared from the feet of oxen, and used by curriers in dressing leather), and mare's grease (imported from Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, where a multitude of horses are annually slaughtered for the sake of their hides, tallow, and bones!). In Russia, especially at Moscow, yolk-of-egg oil is in great repute for making soap and pomatum.
Vegetable oils form a very important item in our supplies, inasmuch as oil-seeds to the value of £5,500,000 are annually imported into Britain for crushing purposes, and our exports of oil are roughly
