Seven years ago, Venango County, Pa., was regarded as one of the poorest, as it is one of the smallest counties in the State of Pennsylvania. More than one-third of its entire surface could have been bought for less than $3.00 per acre. Its best improved farms would bring little if anything over $30 per acre. Its entire industrial products did not exceed $300,000. Choice oil lands sell now readily at from $300 to $5,000 per acre. They have been sold as high as $45,000 per acre. The yield of oil from the county during the last year was over $50,000,000 – greater than the entire coal and iron trade of the entire State of Pennsylvania. Should the present price of oil be sustained, the product will be nearly $80,000,000 the coming.

That oil, as an article of commerce and exploration, is to become of the first importance, is very certain. Its uses everywhere are all multiplying. The demand for it augmenting in the same proportion. It is rapidly displacing the other substances as a lubricator. As an illuminator outside of our cities and towns, where there is no gas, it has taken the place of everything else heretofore employed for that purpose. In time the same will be true of Europe. Predictions are made that it will be exclusively consumed in the production of gas, especially in towns remote from the coal mines, as there will be a great saving in the difference of the cost of transportation. Nor is it at all unlikely that it will be applied to generating steam in ocean navigation.

The extent of the oil-bearing territory, and the richness of the deposits, is such that it may be considered inexhaustible. Since the original discovery in Pennsylvania oil has been found in Western New York, Western Virginia and Ohio. Fine surface indications are also said to have been discovered on the Pacific shores. – Journal of Commerce.