POWER DEVELOPMENT AT NIAGARA. 609 



fact that they are as diverse as the manufacture of " mechanical " 

 wood pulp and the smelting of aluminum. 



There are already at the falls a few establishments using 

 power developed by turbines, and which have been quietly at 

 work for years. There is a canal known as the Hydraulic Canal 

 on the American side, skirting the city of Niagara Falls, and ter- 

 minating on the cliffs, half a mile below the cataract. There are a 

 number of mills here which, for the most part, however, utilize 

 only a fraction of the total fall available, probably for the reason 

 that when they were built there were not in existence the high- 

 grade water wheels suitable for great head that are on the market 

 to-day. 



People in general have the idea that the Niagara water power 

 is inexhaustible, and so it probably is, so far as human require- 

 ments go. There are, however, some tolerably close data on which 

 to figure the total horse power. The Lake Survey Board and 

 Mr. R. C. Reid, examining the matter independently, have come 

 to a very fair agreement in their conclusions on this point. From 

 their figures it would appear that the average flow is about 270,- 

 000 cubic feet per second, and this is almost exactly the same 

 as the almost unthinkable quantity of 1,000,000,000 pounds per 

 minute. A horse power of work is the equivalent of 33,000 foot 

 pounds per minute, and as the weight above mentioned falls 

 161 feet, the horse power of the total is expressed as follows : 

 161 X 1,000,000,000 -4- 33,000 = close on five- million. 



Owing to the lack in full efficiency of even the best commer- 

 cial turbine wheels, we may take the limit of power that could be 

 developed as about 4,000,000 horse power. 



The average power is not departed from to any great extent at 

 different seasons, as is the case with other water powers, because 

 the spring thaws and summer droughts affect hardly at all the 

 level of Lake Erie, from which the falls get their supply. 



The system of Great Lakes above Ontario would require a 

 year in order to have their level reduced by three feet and a 

 half by even the enormous drain of a thousand million pounds of 

 water per minute above referred to, supposing the system to be 

 entirely cut off from its normal supply. A paper by Mr. R. C. 

 Reid before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in March, 1885, 

 gives the foiling data : Total water-shed area down to Niagara, 

 290,000 square miles ; total lake surface, 92,000 square miles ; aver- 

 age rainfall in the lake district, thirty-six inches and that we 

 may assume twenty inches annually of evaporation and absorp- 

 tion, leaving sixteen inches over the whole area finding its way to 

 the lakes. From the lake surface proper, there occurs evaporation 

 to the extent of twenty-four inches per annum. Further, in refer- 

 ence to the enormous storage capacity of the system, he shows 



VOL. XLV. 46 



