Dbcembke 19, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



999 



obtained a concession for making the line, 

 agreed with a syndicate for its construction. 

 There were to be two tunnels side by side. 

 It was agreed that the work should begin at 

 latest on November 13, 1898, and the first 

 tunnel was to be completed, and the piercing 

 of the second tunnel finished, in five years 

 and a half— by May 15, 1904. The length of 

 the tunnel was 19,770 meters. At the begin- 

 ning hand-drilling gave a progress of 1.94 

 meters a day, but since hydraulic drills were 

 set to work the progress made had been at 

 the rate of seven, eight, and ten meters daily. 

 Up to the end of last month 13,608 meters 

 had been pierced. Owing to difficulites, the 

 syndicate had requested that the date for the 

 termination of the work might be extended 

 for fourteen months — to July 1, 1905. There 

 existed a desire for the construction of a 

 French railway which might utilize the Simp- 

 Ion Tunnel, and repair the injury which the 

 St. Gothard Tunnel had inflicted on French 

 commerce. M. Benassy-Philippe, president 

 of the French Chamber of Commerce at 

 Geneva, had taken the lead in the promotion 

 of such a line, about 75 kilometers long, con- 

 necting Lons-le-Saulnier-Sainte Claude and 

 Geneva, and crossing the Jura in the district 

 known as La Faucille, thus saving three hours 

 in the journey between Paris and Geneva and 

 two hours on the St. Gothard line. The pro- 

 posal for constructing such a railway met 

 with great sympathy in Italy, as it was felt 

 that such a line was just what was wanted 

 to ensure the passage of much of the traffic 

 to the east through the new tunnel. English 

 commerce would flow through whichever tun- 

 nel was served by the shortest route, and this 

 would eventually be by the La Faucille line 

 and the Simplon Tunnel. 



In view of the great works for irrigation 

 now being planned by the Geological Sur- 

 vey, the review of irrigation worlis for India 

 recently published by the British government 

 is of interest. According to the London 

 Times the ' productive works ' — that is, those 

 constructed out of loan funds in the expecta- 

 tion that they would prove directly remunera- 

 tive — yielded a net revenue of about £1,633,- 



000, the largest on record, equivalent to a per- 

 centage of 7.36 on a total capital outlay of 

 £22,172,000. This percentage has only once 

 been exceeded — viz., in 1897-98, when it was 

 7.50. The most profitable results were ob- 

 tained in the Punjab and Madras, where the. 

 percentages were 11.24 and 9.05 respectively. 

 Out of 35 works classed as productive, 13 (in- 

 cluding all the canals in Bengal, the Deccan 

 and Gujarat) are never expected to cover the 

 interest on the capital outlay. The 22 actually 

 productive works yielded 10.11 per cent. One 

 canal, the Cauvery delta in Madras, returned 

 34.81 per cent. If the total surplus profits 

 realized up to the end of 1900-1901 be added 

 together, the open canals have produced 27| 

 per cent., after paying all charges for interest 

 and working expenses. No new productive 

 works were opened in 1900-1901, but £612,000 

 was spent on seven new works in Upper 

 Burma, the Punjab, and Sind. With regard 

 to works constructed out of the famine grant 

 as ' famine protective works ' not expected to 

 be remunerative, it is noteworthy that they 

 yielded a return of 2.35 per cent, on capital. 

 But this is largely due to the great and in- 

 creasing success of the Swat River Canal, 

 which alone yielded 10.41 per cent. Five 

 more protective works are under construction. 

 There is a large number of ' minor works,' 

 which irrigated 2,625,456 acres in 1900-1901, 

 and returned 74 per cent, on capital. Those 

 in Sind proved the most lucrative, yielding 

 26.18 per cent. Another class of ' minor 

 works,' for which no capital accounts are kept 

 because they were mostly constructed under 

 native rule, irrigated 2,581,829 acres. More- 

 over, Madras Presidency has 28,000 tanks and 

 6,000 irrigation channels, irrigating 3,173,250 

 acres. The total area irrigated by all descrip- 

 tions of works in 1900-1901 was 19,646,000 

 acres, the largest on record. The total 

 capital outlay on works for which capital 

 accounts are kept has been about £28,320,000, 

 yielding in 1900-1901 about 6J per cent., after 

 payment of interest, etc. The value of the 

 crops raised on the irrigated area during the 

 year was estimated at £27,667,000, or approxi- 

 mately the amount of the capital outlay. On 



