587

suit case-such an arrangement as shown by an accompanying photograph, having already been devised.

The liquid gas being actually cheaper than ordinary illuminating gas, anybody can afford to use it. When it comes to be manufactured in immense quantities, as is likely to be the case before long, it will doubtless be cheaper yet. Country hotels and rural estates will probably find it particularly useful delivered in bottles at regular intervals, in whatever quantities may be desired. The very simplicity of its use recommends it. All one has to do is to turn the stop-cock and the gas is on.

It is exceedingly fortunate that a means should have been discovered whereby part of the waste of natural gas in this country can be turned to useful account. Dr. I. C.White, State Geologist of West Virginia, recently said:

bushels of coal. There can be no doubt that for every barrel of oil taken from the earth there has been wasted more than ten times its equivalent in heating power, or weight even, of this best of all fuels."

"At this very minute, natural gas, the purest form of fuel, ideal in every respect, is passing into the air from uncontrolled gas wells, from oil wells, from giant flambeaus, from leaking pipe-lines, and many other methods of waste at not less than one billion cubic feet daily and probably much more. The record of waste of this best and purest fuel is a national disgrace. The heating value of a billion cubic feet of natural gas is equivalent to that of one million

Says Mr. Snelling: "These gases from oil wells, which have up to now been the most difficult to utilize in pipe-lines or otherwise, are the very ones that are best adapted for the production of liquid gas. The new discovery opens to the use of the world the enormous volumes of oil-well gas now so generally wasted, and derives from this refuse material a product which gives to the country home all of the conveniences of gas for lighting and cooking, thus bestowing upon the farm advantages which up to now have been available only in thickly populated districts."

The following table shows the amount of light produced by the new gas for ten cents, as compared with electricity, city gas, etc.-the term "candle power hour" representing one candlepower for one hour:

Liquid gas, 2,200 candle power

hours.

City gas, 1,600 candle power hours. Electricity (Tungsten), 790 candle power hours.

Acetylene, 640 candle power hours. Kerosene, 465 candle power hours. Certainly liquid gas should be welcomed by the householder.

MPORTANT experiments have recently been made on the DortmundEms Canal with a new towing scheme, which may revolutionize the service on inland water-ways. The inventor of this system is Baurat Koss. The Koss system, or water railway, as it is called, adapts itself in every respect to the railway insuring a similarly economical service just as an ordinary railway may be defined as a train of carriages the wheels of which are compelled to travel on rails, so the water railway is a series of barges with wheels, compelled to move on a rail.

Of course, there is some essential difference between the wheels of the ordinary and the water railway. While the driving wheels of a railway train are intended to propel the train by the friction due to its weight and the resulting adhe

sion on the rails, the water railway, in the absence of adhesive friction, requires artificial friction. This is produced in a most ingenious manner by causing the wheels fixed to the bottom of the tugboat to lift, for a distance of from twenty to forty inches, an iron rail lying at the water bottom. The moorings of this rail are such as to allow of its being readily lifted beyond the surface of the waterfor the sake of revision and repair-without loosening any joint. On the other hand, they prevent any displacement in a horizontal direction. On account of the stable equilibrium of the tug-boat, the water railway, in opposition to ordinary land railways, obviously requires only a single rail supporting the four wheels fixed below the bottom of the tug-boat. These wheels, actuated from the latter, draw the rail along between them, like

A

USTRALIA, having determined upon possessing a navy of her own, has not been content with placing orders for construction in England. She has started building what is now possible, and is preparing to do bigger things.

The first Commonwealth naval unit is so designed as to form the foundation for a large navy in the future. In its first stage the Royal Australian Navy will consist of eighteen vessels: one battleship, now being built in Great Britain, three protected cruisers, one small cruiser, two gunboats, six torpedo boat destroyers, two torpedo boats, two submarines, one training ship.

The cradle of the Australian navy is at Cockatoo Island, in Port Jackson, which, if it is not the finest harbor in the world, runs no less than a dead heat with any other competitor. To qualify Port Jack son as a naval base, there are, in close

proximity to the big dock at Cockatoo, the naval dockyard and depot at Garden Island, whereon are the necessary machinery, storehouses, and all accessories and facilities indispensible for the maintenance of a fleet in a state of efficiency. Spectacle Island as a naval ordnance store, and King Edward Victualling Yard as a depot for supplies, are close at hand. And, the Imperial Government being willing to place the whole of these buildings and valuable plant at the disposal of the Commonwealth, in trust, on condition that they are not diverted from their original use, Australia becomes the possessor of the basis of a navy with up-to-date organization.

Cockatoo Island is an ideal spot for a naval dockyard and workshops. It lies well back in a superbly locked harbor, which has fine headlands at the mouth capable of being fortified to repulse any attempt to enter. The offices and work

be able to build a second class cruiser outright, with the exception of certain auxiliary machinery which can be obtained only through the makers. And the cost of production, compared with the imported article, will, the superintendent of the yard declares, be infinitely cheaper.

Since as at critical times there might be some difficulty in obtaining supplies of raw material from the other lands, the great importance of the development of Australia's iron and steel industry is being recognized. The time when the building of a battleship may be undertaken is already anticipated.

There has been so much delay in establishing naval schools in the Commonwealth, that the Naval Board has had to draw upon Great Britain for trained officers and men. More than a thousand men will come out to Australia for from three to five years.