cially, indicating beyond reasonable doubt that the green oil occurs in glacial beds. Oppenheim’s remark that I. C. White reports no oil in earlier wells in the same vicinity has no bearing on this matter, because the older wells were much shalower. Oppenheim is right in saying, indirectly, that Washburne presents only meager evidence of the occurrence of a distinct type of oil in the lower horizons (Itararé formations), and Washburne admits that his sugestions was hardly more than “grasping at a straw” in the hope of finding better oil a greater depth in the undrilled central parts of the Paraná basin. Yet even meager evidence seems more valuable than unsupported opinion to the contrary. That deeper source beds of dark marine shales of the Devonian, and possibly marine Carboniferous strata, may exist under parts of the Paraná basin, seems quite possible, not only because of the presence of Devonian shales in Paraná and of marine Carboniferous in southern Paraguay e Uruguay, but also because of general frequency with stratigrafic lacunae at the margins of other great basin are filled at least partly by other intervening strata in central parts of the basin”. Etc.
Bastam essas citações para mostrar o valor cientifico da maravilhosa obra que Oppenheim lançou como o Novo Testamento da Geologia Nacional e que tão fundo calou no animo dos basba-
