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Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 113, 13 September 1866, Page 2

TO THE EDITOB OF THE ' NELSON EXAMINEE.' Sin —l read in your issue of the Bth instant, respecting the various interprovincial cricket matches which are to come off this season. I have no doubt that our young Albanian cricketers "will be most anxious to hear the result of those matches, and am certain that nothing will delight them more than to do their utmost in defeating their adversaries, and once more regain the laurels for their city. There is every probability of obtaining a very strong eleven from the Albion Club this season, but before this young team could proceed to face their opponents, some measures would have to be taken for forwarding them to their destination. It must be borne in mind that they are not young men of fortune, and, in consequence, would require some assistance from the public. Let us hope then, if they should have the pluck to challenge the Wellingtonians, our fellow citizens will not k be backward in supporting the lists which will have to go round, thereby giving them every encouragement, and once more supporting the noblest and most manly of games, which had almost (except by a very few) fallen into obscurity. I am, &c,

Petbolettm in CAiiroENiA. — The Alta California gives the following important information of the discovery of petroleum in large quantity, in that country :—": — " An important event in the progress of our State in the cutting of several tunnels, that yield flowing streams of petroleum, near San Buenaventura, gives reason to presume that numerous or numberless similar streams may be obtained by other tunnels. It was confidently asserted that California contains no petroleum ; and afterwards, that such petroleum as there might be, could only be obtained by pumping, and in small quantities. These assertions were for a long time not disproved ; but a number of persons, notwithstanding every discouragement, continued their explorations, expending a total of probably a million dollars. It is said that 1 30,000 dollars were spent on the Ojalrancho alone. Only four miles from that rancho is the land of the Stanford Oil Works, where several tunnels have been cut into the oil-bearing shale, and from every tunnel a steady stream of oil is obtained — one tunnel yielding more than five hundred gallons daily, eight gallons per day for each linear foot of the tunnel in the oil-bearing rock, which extends for miles. This rock, a sandy shale, stands at an angle of about 45 degrees to the horizon. In the Stanford rancho, the main tunnel is about 1,200 feet above the sea, and runs into a hill, the summit of which may have an elevation of 2,200 feet. It is the theory of Mr. S. Moss, the author of the tunnel project, that the oblique direction and loose texture of the petroleum shale in California will prevent the oil from flowing out of any well. In his opinion, the petroleum, as it approaches the surface, becomes mixed with the sulphur, iron and salt found in the earth and rock, and these, with earth materials, furnish the brea, or asphaltum, which oozes up out of the ground at many places along the coast. Sereral thousand barrels of the San Buenaventura oil have already reached San Francisco, and if the supply is as large and permanent as persons who have been on the ground imagine, it will not be long before Californian kerosene will supply all our own demand, and crowd the kerosene of Pennsylvania in foreign markets."