The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1865-02-03
Petrolcum-Great Rise In Stocks--I 70
Imnumerable Uses.


to the immense value and Importance of
our apparently limitless deposits of pc
trOleum.
The trade has recently received an
immense impetus. Fresh discoveries of
oilbearing land have been made Oh all
sides in the districts previously known
to contain the invaluable product, and
new territories have disclosed to the keen
army of explorers-now everywhere at
work-the presence of this precious ma
terial where its existence was hitherto
scarcely suspected.
The rapidity with which petroleum
stocks have been bought up, is unprece-
dented. Some of them whose shares
were selling at 81 and 81, only fortnight
since, have run up above par, with haste
made to close the books. 1t is astonish-
ing to reflect how short time 1T was
ago that men who "dabbled in petrole-
UNI" were condescendingly cOmmisera-
ted. Now nine-tenths of those who do
80 dabble are envied, and he deems him
self a lucky fellow, indeed, an individual
booked for a halcyon future, who can Sc
cure a fair handful of first class oil
stocks
From Western Pennsylvania and Vir-
ginia; from Central Ohio, Indiana, Ken
lucky, Tennessee and Michigan, every
day brings fresh tidings OF discovery, and
at length, Illinois and Missouri have
Joined the oleaginous sisterhood for, IN
the immediate precincts of both Chicago
and st. Louis, not oil merely, but petro-
lsam of the finest quality has been found,
apparently in abundance, at but few
feet depth of digging. Conspicuous and
pre-eminent again, over all but Pennsyl-
vania, California reappears upon the
scene with gold in one hand and the
purest oil in the other--the discoveries
recently made in Santa Barbara county
turning out to be even more enormously
valuable than was supposed when we
first alluded to them, less than month
ago. And here, too, is another source OF
untold wealth which is to be absorbed by
the policy of the French Emperor in his
stupendous scheme of American coloni-
cation: for there can be but little doubt
that the oil-bearing strata extend from
California far into the western Mexican
provinces.
Without attempting to enter into the
details of new discovery and the specu-
latiops to which it leads, and which bids
fair to make the approaching season one
>of the most memorable that we have ever
witnessed, we will merely note few
items ofprogress in the use of petroleum,
that have ripened since our last article.
We spoke of it as labriCato,; as an H.
lun,inatoyy as fuel and generator of
steam, and as a medicine. We lind that
i'm the course of but four weeks it has
doubled its sphere of value, or rather has
been applied with perfect success to the
following new uses: First: 1t Is coming
to be universally employed by tanners,
after the naptha has been extracted from
it, as a substitute for fish oil, and the
leather thus prepared isfound to be even
better than that tanned i'll the old way.
The naptha SO procured can, then, be
used as substitute for alcohol i'll lini-
ments and other medicinal compounds
1t is said to be the best solvent for i'll
dia rubber known, and with it rubber
yarnish for leather, rendering the latter
waterproof, can be made.
The heavy oil strained in a cold room
yields the parafne which is employed to
all ,lterate and cheaper spermaceti, bees
wax, etc, and for making candles. Our
lair DANES and demoiselles will be no lit
tie astonished, also, to learn that eighty
tons of it axe used in this country as
mastic, which they buy in our candy
stores, and chew in pretty little per-
fumed yellow and rose-colored sticks.
Again, the most exquisite dyes are OBJ
tanned from it, among them the new and
beautiful girofa, surprising all that Tyre
and Persia ever owned.
Our self-raising -four derives its most
distinctive quality from this multiple
and wonderful substance, since the waste
acid that flows from the petroleum re-
fineries is largely applied to the imitation
and adulteration OF cream Of tartar which
is the lighteper of the bread
But the press owe direct debt that
must lie now acknowledged to this good
genius from the depths of the earth. An
American chemist has recently taken out
patent for making printing inks from
the various colors and extracts of pc
troleum! and the black ink lie thus man
ufactures is better than that made lcith I'm
seed oil, and oaR be sold for half the price
of the latter! Some of our great publish
ing houses are evenno constantly using
1t, and this very article may be printed
with the pigment! The consumption of
the compound already amounts TO hun
dreds of tons,
A large and celebrated firm in this city
is now making delightful petroleum
cosmetic soap, and the best family soap
from the same oil.
Within cannon-shot of that establish
ment is another where gas is made and
furnished from petroleum at the rate of
81 so per 10000 feet, and it yields the
most powerful heat yet known for domes-
tic purposes.
With these facts before him, the reader
will no longer gaze incredulously AT the
swelling list of oil companies, and the
upward tide of oil stocks, but will rather
muse silently i'll humble recognition of
that Omuipotent Wisdom aud Bevevo-
lence which prepares for mankind, at
large, and nations, separately, precisely
those resources which they require at
the very moment when they need them
most.