KEROSINE DISCOVERIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Colonist, Volume VIII, Issue 801, 30 June 1865, Page 3

KEROSINE DISCOVERIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Kerosine discoveries are proceeding in New South Wales. The Maitland Mercwry makes rather an important statement on this subject. It says :—" The hon. Bourn Eussell, M.L.C., who was present at the close of the experiment with the Hartley mineral at Sydney was struck by the similarity of the minerals in question to the cannel coal of his mines at Stoney Creek, near Maitland, and since his return from Sydney has tested the accuracy of the impression in a most satisfactory manner. With apparatus of the simplest kind, roughly prepared for the purpose by one of his sons, he had submitted a quantity of the Stoney Creek cannel for dry distillation, at a low temperature, and after treating the products with various chemicals, according to formulae laid down in ' Young's Organic Chemistry,' has succeeded in obtaining kerosine nearly as colorless as water. A sample of this has been sent to Sydney. Another sample, which Mr. Russell showed us, had not been so highly purified. It was of a dark sherry color, but as bright, clear, limpid as the wine itself. When burned in au open cup, it emitted a large volume of flame, not, of course, without smoke, and a strong characteristic odour. The experiments at Stoney Creek have thus far been conducted in a rough and ready fashion, and do not therefore afford any exact basis for calculations as to the rate of profit obtainable from the manufacture; but Mr. .Russell is sanguine as to its paying character. Between our bituminous shales and our caunel coals, found at various localities, from the neighborhood of Scone in the north to Wollongong in the south, it is expected that there will be no want of the raw material, if the process of distillation can be brought low enough.