CORRESPONDENCE QUACKS AND OIL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2063, 25 April 1907, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE QUACKS AND OIL.

To the Editor of the Gisborne Times. Sir, —In your Saturday’s issue there is a very amusing report under the heading, “The Gisborne Oil Company.” I am not a shareholder of the company and have no need to criticise the proceedings as reported, further than to refer to the remarkable scientific! ?) exposition of a possible oil field as given by the Chairman. When I read the report there came into my mind some remarks that were made by a celebrated man —a Dr. Dawson, of Birmingham—in a lecture I heard him deliver in my youth, the subject being “Quacks.” The rev. doctor said “that there is a certain class of men who, if you will only give them the opportunity, soon show the stuff of which they are made by the letting out of their sawdust.” If the remarks of the chairman of the oil company as reported in the press were actually made by him, then it must be confessed that at least one man in this district has supplied the public with a plentiful supply of sawdust. A little learning, alas 1 is a .dangerous thing, particularly in the use of scientific terms, and I devoutly hope that the.chairman’s law is better than his geology. Fiom whence came the wisdom of the chairman? Did it come from Slieal or Bedlam, or was it the outcome of a disordered mind! Read here some of the chairman’s erudition: “If there was not that impervious strata there was no oil worth troubling about. The impervious strata ran in a wave. The formation of the rocks might he any shape. Nothing could get through the strata, consequently the oil gravitated upwards to a point called the anticline. I may say that what I am explaining to you is the expert’s explanation of this—the oil worked up the strata to the anticline point. If a bore were put down in the hollow of the impervious strata line nothing would he struck.” A more meaningless, contradictory jumble could not have been ponnod, and it only shows what stuff is accepted either in science, or politics, or religion, so long as there arc those who have tlio face to pretend a ’knowledge of that which thoy usually are grossly ignorant. Imagine a man saying, “The formation of the rocks might be any shape.” One can understand a formation being made up of varieties of kinds of rocks, but to say they are made up of “any shape” is pure nonson.se. Again, “If a bore were put down in tlio hollow of the impervious strata line nothing would be struck.” I should think not, indeed, except maybe the person who would attempt to put down a bore *“in the hollow of the impervious strata line,” whatever such rubbish may mean. But what need to proceed further? The user of the terms neither understands the meaning of the terms nor their technical application, and it is, to say the least, a pity that men should attempt to tackle an intricate subject in geological science, or indeed in any science when ignorant of its very elements. Had the chairman kept to liis legitimate duties and suggested the need of, a proper geological survey by the Government geologist, fir. Boll' lmd had lie aslsed that every influence he used to obtain his services for the East Coast district he would have done public service, and 1 for one would have been glad to assist in this direction. But the “sawdust,” will smother Dr. Bell as it has smothered me. One is always glad to discover those who study the rocks, and such may always rely upon help in the furtherance of their studies, but not so when Dr. Dawson’s quacks appear. They are my abomination, and to judge by the report of the Gisborne Oil Company there can be no mistake that the chairman is a geological quack of the first order.—l am, etc., H. HILL. [The above letter lias been in type for a few days, having been held over at the request of the writer so that it should not appear to have- any significance other than that expressed therein.—Ed G.T.] ,

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