The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
The Largest Liquor House in Birmingham

A Syncline is. similarly, a sloping up. We may imagine the rows of a cotton patch as Antclines, the furrows as Syn clines.
 A Quaquaversal is an Anticline soping in three or more directions. We have a magnificent illustration of Quaqua- versal in our Democrat Ridge which. generally speaking, dips northwest, south- east and southwest.
 A Dome is an Anticline soping in all directions
 At we see flat crested Anticlipe; at a Syncline: at M a Monoclinal struc- ture with uniform dip. place to steer clear of in drilling for oil or gas, at I we see this uniform rate of dip abruptly interrupted-this is the place for you to drill. You at least stand a chance there. At T we find our general Monocline ter raced out to form a sort of arrested Anti cline. It is a favorable place for testing. At F we find normal fault. At IF we find thrust fault As you see, a normal fault makes an obtuse angled, awkardly shaped letter'S or z.
 A thrust fault makes the angles sharp, as in z and z made backwards.
 Where the faulted segments have the correct position or tilt and are sealed in by protecting shales or other mpervious formations, they constitute very tempting territory for testing. This is quite con trary to the usual idea In other depart ments of economic geology the fault is the most dreaded of all phenomena. AL ways. when he runs across something that he cant unravel the pseudo -geolog-
 st has only to tragcally exclaim 'Fault'' and the condemnation of the territory promptly follows. As in all other de- partments of life, so in geology the chronic 'Faultfinder'' is a veritable pest. Sometimes a fault is the very best thing for land owner. It brings to his view mineral values he would not be other wise aware of and puts the veins in workable position. Sometimes, as at T r, (supposing the broken formation carries. for. instance, coal seam his acre of ground contains more than his share. for the fault has given him two different segments of the same seam, one overly ing the other. Even so with oil and gas: where the upper measures contain great thickness of impervious strata Gas is the, case in our northwest Alabama terrl- tories with it's great shale alternations). the fracture made by the fault will almost invariably be dramatically sealed, thus preventing the final escape of the oil or gas. The rupture of the oil or gas bear ing sands below might thus enable the contents of several different sands tsome of them, possibly. too deep to be reached by the drilD to escape and unite in per meating, with great pressure, some sand above. I am not afraid of well-sealed faults. It is more than probable that the present Fayette field Is conspcu- ous example of this type.
 Of course it requires one equipped with both experience and aptitude to tell when this long general Monocline in west Ala- bama varies it's dip, or makes q terrace. or forms an Anticline, or is rent in twain by a Fault leaving segments of such shape and so protected by sealing as to be suitable for testing.
 So in conclusion l urge: Let us in Ala bama not go through the sad experience of many other fields; let us steer clear of the jack-legs, the fakirs, the mineral rodsters. and the N-Ray-eye fellows who have caused multiplied millions of dollars to be wasted in the older fields and let us open up our great fields along sound economic and geologic lines.