A branch railway, four miles long, designed by Sir John Wolfe Barry, has been opened for mineral traffic between the Barry Company's line and the Brecon and Merthyr line.

A Times naval correspondent states that considerable alterations and additions are being made to the battleship King Edward VII., to fit her for liquid fuel as an alternative to coal.

Messrs. Andrew Brown and Co., of 110, Cannon Street, London, E.C., have been appointed the London and District Agents for Messrs. Penman and Co., boiler makers, Glasgow.

Professor Gisbert Kapp, whose brief biography recently appeared in PAGE'S WEEKLY, upon his appointment at Birmingham University, has been made an honorary member of the Physical Society of Frankfort.

The Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Company, Ltd., of Thornbury Works, Bradford, have opened an office at 17, Victoria-street, Westminster. This will be in charge of Mr. E. W. T. Ward, who has recently joined their staff as London representative.

It is announced that the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company have purchased the fleet of the Goole Steam Shipping Company, consisting of eighteen steamers, and will run them to the Continent in connection with their railway service to the East Coast.

We hear that Mr. P. M. Sankey has left the firm of Messrs. Johnson and Phillips, where for the past seven years he has been works manager of the Electric Cable Works. We wish Mr. Sankey every success in the future.

Sir William H. White, K.C.B. (Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy, 1885-1902), has commenced practice at 8, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W. By wire he will be addressed," Navalhood, London," and by telephone, 1565, Westminster.

Mr. Charles De Grave Sells, M. Inst.C.E., who went to Italy some eighteen years ago under an arrangement with the Italian Minister of Marine, is now practising on his own behalf, and is acting as the representative of English firms in connection with marine engines and machinery, etc. His official address is Cornigliaño, Ligure, Italy.

During the last ten weeks great progress has been made with the new University buildings at Birming ham. One of the large engineering blocks is now roofed in, and shafting for driving the metal and woodworking machines is being erected. For the special vacation course in metallurgical work, conducted by Professor Turner, the maximum number of students has already been enrolled.

Sir James Dewar, at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, said he felt it a very high honour to follow in the footsteps of the great man who had already received the Gunning Victoria Jubilee prize. It was his intention to hand over the money value of the award to the University of Edinburgh so that it might go towards the fund being raised for the memorial of the late Professor Tait.

The Peter Tunner Memorial.

On June 8th, 1897, the Nestor of the Austrian iron trade, Peter von Tunner, died at Lesben at

into

the age of 89 years. The work begun by Tunner in 1840, as lecturer on the metallurgy of iron and continued with astonishing energy for a lifetime, was the foundation of scientific metallurgy. He was one of the first to appreciate the importance of the Bessemer process, and its introduction Austria was due to his energy. As an author he was continually active. His last monograph was an account of the iron industry of Styria, prepared on the occasion of the visit of the Iron and Steel Institute to Austria in 1884. Honours were showered upon him by monarchs, municipalities and scientific societies. In 1878 he received the Bessemer Gold Medal from the Iron and Steel Institute of which he had long been a member. His services to metallurgy have not been forgotten since his death, and a worthy monument to his memory has now been erected at Lesben, the scene of his long-continued activity, funds for the purpose having been contributed by his former pupils and by members of the Mining Society of Styria, of the Iron and Steel Institute, and of other societies of which he was an honorary member. The monument was recently unveiled with great ceremony. It is constructed of granite with the figures in bronze. A mining student and an iron-smelter are represented in the act of winding an oak and laurel wreath round the base of the bust. The sculptor was Mr. Carl Hackstock.

Harbour Works at East London.

The writer of an article on "The Ports of South Africa," in the new year's number of the Syren and Shipping, makes some comments on the Port of East London, which illustrates forcibly the difficulties which were encountered in dealing with the river bar.

East London, he says, has an admirable inner harbour, access to which, however, is sometimes impossible, on account of the bar and narrow ingress, obstructed, as this has been, by a ridiculously extended middle training wall, devised in days when what were known as freshets" used to occur frequently on the Buffalo River (which forms the inner harbour), and " scouring ' methods were the best approved and most in vogue for the bar clearance. Curiously enough, these freshets have almost entirely ceased to operate in the Buffalo channels, and the training wall, which was meant to co-operate with nature, has latterly proved an artificial obstruction to the entrance of long vessels, unless at considerable risk. The harbour problem at East London is not so much one, as at Durban, of depths on the bar, or of draughts of vessels crossing the same, but of access in the steering ways and of width of entrance or egress channels.

The engineering which narrowed the channel to assist a natural scour was right, so far as it went, for the day or the conditions it had to contend against; but it was not prospective engineering; and when the natural scour surceased, almost, if not quite permanently, the narrowness of the entrance channel and the meagreness of steering and turning way, consequent upon the existence of the middle training wall, became a fresh adversity. In face of this, however, betterment has been gradually achieved; and, although the conditions at the Buffalo mouth cannot hold a candle to those at the entrance to Durban harbour, yet there is every indication that in the future the reverse may be the case. So long as a vessel does not exceed 20 ft. or 21 ft. draught and 450 ft. length, she can enter at most states of the tide or sea, and, once inside, can lie in smooth river waters alongside wharves which are fitted with the latest and best appliances for landing and clearing cargo.

The article from which the above details and the illustration on the opposite page are taken, is only one of many features of interest in this excellent number which gives a comprehensive resumé of the progress made in shipping affairs during the past

year.

A Theory of Water-finding.

The Times is apparently trying to clear up the mysteries attendant upon water-finding, and in Wednesday's issue an interesting theory is advanced by Mr. Sydney F. Walker, of Bath. There is so much misapprehension as to the forces underlying the operations of the professional water-finder, and his occupation, in spite of practical success, is so often looked upon as a species of charlatanry, that any attempt to explain the matter scientifically is worthy of more than passing notice. We have no space to quote from Mr. Walker's column at length, but his ideas are given in brief in the following paragraph.

The operator, he says, is merely the instrument that responds to the force generated by the underground spring, just as a gold-leaf electroscope responds to the force delivered by an electrostatic charge. A portion of the energy present in the running water underground is converted into a form of energy that has been hitherto unknown, and is at present without a name, but which possesses some of the properties of the other physical forces and responds to some of their laws. The principal property it possesses, so far as is known at present, is that of stimulating the nerves controlling some of the muscles of the hands, and thereby causing certain muscular movements of the fingers, which are rendered visible usually by the forked twig that has become associated with the operation of water-finding. The forked twig is merely the indicator, showing the presence of the energy transformed by the running water, just as the diverging gold leaves of an electroscope indicate the presence of an electrostatic charge. The energy, in the form described, passes from the ground, up through the body of the operator, to the nerves controlling the muscles of the hands, producing in those muscles the movements which cause the twig to turn.

Geological Society Awards.

The council of the Geological Society of London will this year award the medals and funds in their gift as follows: The Wollaston medal to Dr. J. J. Harris Teall, M.A., F.R.S.; the Murchison medal to Mr. Edward John Dunn, of Melbourne; the Lyell medal to Dr. Hans Reusch, Director of the Geological Survey of Norway; the Bigsby medal to Professor J. W. Gregory, D.Sc., F.R.S.; the Wollaston fund to Mr. H. H. Arnold-Bemrose, M.A.; the Murchison fund to Mr. H. L. Bowman, M.A.; and the Lyell fund to Mr. E. A. Newell Arber, M.A., and Mr. Walcot Gibson.

WE are indebted to Messrs. John Hetherington and Sons, Ltd., for the accompanying illustration showing improvements which have been recently made in double-axle turning lathes for high speed cutting.

IMPROVED DOUBLE-AXLE TURNING LATHE, BY MESSRS. JOHN HETHERINGTON AND SONS, LTD.

These lathes are specially designed for turning at high speed each end of an axle at the same time. The axle is revolved in dead centres and is driven by a hollow spindle headstock through a Clements driver. Independent starting, stopping and reverse, self-acting sliding motion is given to each carriage by two separate steel guide screws and gun metal half nuts with instantaneous release motion. There is a fixed ratio of positive and continuous feeds, giving 32, 16, 8, and 4 cuts per inch traverse through cut gearing. This can be changed by the indexed hand wheel in front of the lathe while the latter is in motion. Each carriage is also fitted with an adjustable independent automatic stop motion to the feed in both directions.

The lathe is fitted with compound slide rests, one to each saddle, with a revolving steel capstan tool holder suitable for two tools; also with spring catch and locking handle. The bottom slide and carriage form drain troughs, collecting and delivering the lubricant into trays beneath the bed.

The driving headstock is of massive design, the hollow cast-iron spindle revolving in adjustable parallel bearings, and the cap and headstock forming an entire cover to the main driving wheel on the spindle.

The dead centre headstocks are movable, the righthand one being fitted with a sliding spindle of hard steel, adjustable by screw and handwheel, split nose, locking bolt and centre. It is mounted on a saddle fitted with a coarse pitch screw, by which means it can be quickly traversed transversely in order to pass the axle through the driving headstock spindle. The left hand dead centre headstock is fitted with a fixed spindle and loose centre.

The lathe is driven by a four-speed cone pulley of large diameter suitable for a wide belt of high velocity, while the double cut gear provides for an instantaneous change from high-speed cutting to slow-speed cutting for finishing, etc.

The following are the chief dimensions:

Height of centres, 13 in.; to turn in diameter up to 8 in.; to admit between centres, 8 ft.; diameter of hole through spindle, 12 in.; length of bed, 13 ft.; width and depth of bed, 20 in. by 12 in.; gear ratio, 9:23 and 336 to 1; diameter of pulleys and speed of countershaft, 22 in. by 7 in.: 460; cutting speeds per minute at maximum diameter 75, and with belt on large step of bottom cone pulley, 20; Approximate b.h.p. required, 27; approximate weight of lathe, 136 cwt..

FRANCE.

HE boilers of the two armoured cruisers Jules Ferry and Jules Michelet will be of the Du TempleGuyot type, with small tubes, but the majority of the other vessels under construction will be fitted with Niclausse or Belleville steam generators with large tubes.

It appears that when the battleship Justice was launched by the Société de la Mediterranée, her hull was considerably strained, and an inquiry is to be held into the manner in which vessels are launched by this company.

The next programme of construction is expected to contain particulars of a new class of protected cruiser, approximating to the scout type of the British navy. They are to be of 3,000 tons displacement, with 26 knots speed, and the first batch will probably be laid down in the course of this year.

GERMANY.

Progress with the new battleships for the German

navy is rapid, but it is noteworthy that like the Schwaben, the Elsass has met with a serious accident while running her trials. She was finishing her circle turning trials according to one report, when she lost her rudder, owing to the pressure of water. Although this report is quite credible, there must have been something seriously wrong with the construction of the vessel, and she will be some little time making good the damage done. The battleship Braunschweig on her full power trials made an average of 18.43 knots, and at an endurance trial of eleven hours' duration the average indicated horse - power was 11,588. The armoured cruiser Friederich Karl has not given very satisfactory results on her trials, only attaining 18.7 knots with 17,759 horse-power, and later under better conditions of wind and weather, 2015 knots. The protected cruiser Bremen made an average 23.288 knots on her full power, her highest speed being 24 466 knots. Two seagoing torpedo boats, Nos. 123 and 125, the latter fitted with turbine machinery, have made over 28 knots on trial. An accident occurred to the Prinz Adalbert when steaming at full speed on her trials, the high-pressure cylinder of one of her engines bursting.

RUSSIA.

"The Emperor has sanctioned the expenditure of £160,000,000 for rebuilding the Russian navy." In these bald words the St. Petersburg correspondents announced the new scheme for the replacing of the squadrons which Russia has lost in the war. The programme is to cover ten years, and many of the vessels will be built abroad. The building programme is to consist of eight battleships of the Kniaz Suvaroff type, eight of the Andrei Pervosvannui class, six armoured cruisers, twelve protected cruisers, fifty destroyers, and one hundred torpedo boats.

The Third Pacific squadron which is fitting out in great haste at Libau will take practically every remnant of the Russian fleet from European waters, with the exception of the Black Sea Fleet, which is pinned up behind the Dardanelles. Whether the squadron under Admiral Mebagatoff will be ready to start in another fortnight is doubtful, but urgent commands have been issued for it to do so.

UNITED STATES.

The new battleship New Hampshire will be built by the New York Shipbuilding Company, and the contracts for the two armoured cruisers North Carolina and Montana have been awarded to the Newport News Company. The battleship is to be completed in thirty-eight months.

Two more submarines have been ordered from the Holland Submarine Company, and unless the Latre Company come forward and compete, the remainder of the appropriation authorised by Congress in the summer will be expended on Holland boats. There are already eight submarines of this type in the United States' navy.