Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume I, Issue 78, 5 June 1866, Page 3

The Taranaki Her ali is eloquent ou the suhject of petroleum. It says : — It appears that petroleum or bituminous oil was known and used from the earliest ages — in Egypt, it is said, for enbalmir.g the dead, and ia Persia and India by the Parsees or fire- worshippers as the material of their sacred fires. The celebrated Greek fire is supposed to liave been a preparation of petroleum. The Dead Sea appears to be little more than a great reservoir of bituminous oil, aud the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah on its shores was not to be wondered at, apart from the deserts ©f their inhabitants. Coming down to modern times, we are told that in Italy, .it Parma and Modern., oil-wells have heen worked for two centuries, and the streets of Genoa have long beeu lighted by oil from' neighboring springs. At Baku, on the ■western shores of the Caspian, whence the Parsees drew their supply, the oil flows spontaneously from the surface and rises