great pressure. The
drilling tools were blown out of the well and a column of oil and gas
shot up 150 feet. For a time the well flowed forty thousand barrels of
oil each day, and an unknown quantity of gas. Much of the oil was
scattered around the surrounding country, and all the gas was lost. Men
worked for weeks making reservoirs of earth in an attempt to save the
river of oil.

Another well a few miles distant struck an enormous quantity of gas. It
blew off for days with a roar like that of the steam from a giant
engine. Then it took fire, and the column of flame at night was a
fearful sight. There was gas enough lost from this one well to light a
city for months.

Gas has been escaping during many years from hundreds of wells in the
Pennsylvania, Ohio Valley, Oklahoma, Texas, and California oil fields.
The gas from all these wells together has been estimated to be equal
in value to a river of oil flowing several hundred thousand barrels each
day. In many districts the gas was nearly gone before people discovered
its great value. It is impossible for us to realize the waste which this
represents.

[Illustration: _Myrl's Studio, Bakersfield, California_
A "gusher" in a California oil field wasting great quantities of oil and
gas.]

It has taken Nature a long time to make the oil and gas which we are
losing. When she began this work, the oil regions which have been
mentioned were beneath the sea. In its waters lived countless numbers of
minute organisms, as well as fish of many kinds. As they died, their
bodies accumulated in beds which finally became thousands of feet thick.
Then the currents of the water changed and sand and mud were washed over
these beds, burying them deeply.

Finally the bottom of the sea was lifted and became dry land. The
movement squeezed and folded the rocky layers made of the skeletons of
the animals and plants. The soft parts of their bodies held in these
rocky layers produced a greenish or brownish oil and gas. The gas tried
to escape from the rocks, for they were hot and it wanted more room. In
some places it found openings through the rocks and escaped to the
surface, usually bringing some of the oil with it. The gas was lost, but
a part of the oil remained, forming deposits of tar. In other places the
oil and gas could not reach the surface, but found porous, sandy rocks
into which they went and remained until the oil driller found them.

The tar springs, or "seepages," ind