Na furia de negar, Oppenheim põe em duvida as amostras de petroleo verde e leve que Washburne menciona. Eis como o geologo americano atende a este ponto: In few words Oppenheim dismisses the sugestion of Washburne that the small traces of lighter oil found in the Itararé (glacial) beds of doubtful Permian age, seem to represent a type distinct from the black oil in the higher Permian an Triassic strata, and that the oil of the former type, possibly paraffinic, may have risen from Devonian or other concealed strata. Oppenheim (pg. 113) seems to doubt the accuracy of Washburne´s description of one of these oils from a well at S. Paulo, as “light green Yellowish”, possibly because Washburne failed to write that Dr. Eugenio Dutra, then in charge of governamental drilling, showed him a sample of this color. If a laboratory report on this oil called its color “red” or “chesnut”, one may suspect that the sample was held not against a black opaque object, but was held so that light could pass through it. Of similar significance in regard to the possibility of deeper oil, is Oppenheim’s doubt concerning the validity of the green highly fluid oil in well n. 1 of the Cia. Cruzeiro do Sul, at Bofete, S. Paulo. Presumably he failed to appreciate the description by Washburne (pg. 220) of the intimate penetration of this oil throughout a sample of saturated typical tillite, a degree of penetration that hardly could be imitated artifi-
