160

that the soft parts of the marine animals, now represented by the
impressions in the rocks, furnished the bitumen by slow distil-
lation during the compression and induration of the beds. The
same waters that carried calcite dissolved from the rocks into
the gash veins also carried the black tarry matter. The hypothe-
sis that the bitumen may have originated elsewhere and later
was concentrated in the argillites is negatived by their very im-
pervious character. It is in these, the least porous rocks of
the formation, that the bitumen is found in most abundance.
That they are its original home seems certain.

This occurrence of bituminous matter in connexion with
fossils from which it almost certainly is derived is analagous to
the occurrence of petroleum in the diatomaceous beds of Cali-
fornia,! in the fossil beds from Egypt,’ etc. Itis to be emphasized
that no seepages of oil have anywhere been observed or reported
from the Maude formation. The distillation has been carried
so far that only the black tar, in the nature of an asphaltic resi-
due, has been left; and while there are undoubtedly considerable
quantities of bituminous matter locked up in the argillites, it

cannot be released short of actual distillation by retorting the
rocks.

HAIDA FORMATION.

In the calyx drill hole put down in the eastern part of section
36, township 7, through the lower part of the Haida formation
of the Yakoun basin, brown stains of oily material were found in
the cores at about 465 feet from the surface. As in some of the
occurrences in the Maude formation, the bitumen was in calcite
veinlets. The amount found was very small, no one stain being
over an inch across; and no oil was observed.

The diamond drill holes bored at Camp Wilson in 1914
gave a considerable flow of gas, both during the drilling, and
after it had ceased. The gas was colourless and odourless, and
burned with a yellow flame that seemed to be of low heat inten-
sity. The flow was estimated to be less than a cubic foot per
minute.

1 Arnold and Anderson, U.S.G.S. Bull. 322, 1907, p. 110.
?Fraas, cited by Clarke, U.S.G.S. Bull. 491, 1911, p. 699.