Kathy Leonard, age 10, of Dansville

Petroleum, or rook oil, is a very complicated chemical  The chemists, however, have brokers it apart and studied it this way and that, They can describe it and identify the ingredients from which it 3s made  But though they have a good idea how it was made, they are not absolutely certain  Some say it is dust possible that the oil in the ground was made from ordinary chemicals in the earth’s cruet  But most agree that it most likely came from the remains of tiny plants and animals that lived long ages ago 

These little living things were sea dwellers  They teemed in the oceans when the waters were leas salty than they are today  Here and there an arm of the sea may have been cut off from the rest of the ocean by rising land masses, The water was left to dry and its teeming living things were buried under layers of new rock and earth  In time, it is thought, the heat and pressure brought about chemical changes and the tissues of the small plants and animals became petroleum