I4 Petroleum as Fuel. 
Weight in water—14} cwt. per nautical mile. 
Breaking strain—8 tons 2 cwt., or equal to eleven times 
its weight in water per nautical mile; that is to say, the 
cable will bear its own weight in eleven times depth of 
water. 
Deepest water to be encountered—z2,400 fathoms, or less 
than 24 nautical miles. 
The contract strain is equal to eleven times its weight 
per nautical mile in water. 
Length of cable shipped to complete both lines—2,730 
miles. 
PETROLEUM «AS: FUEE: 
BY COL. JULIUS W. ADAMS. 
HE difficulty hitherto has been in attempting to burn 
the crude petroleum, that the imperfect combustion 
alone attainable by the means in use, has resulted in great 
waste of the material, as shown by the dense smoke which 
invariably accompanied all attempts to burn it in a con- 
fined space. This, and the difficulty of regulating the feed, 
have hitherto prevented a successful application of this 
material as a fuel in the generation of steam in boilers. I 
am well aware that it has occasionally been accomplished 
on a small scale, but no experiments that I have knowledge 
of, have exhibited anything like the requisite command of 
the material in feeding the fire, or certainty in its use as a 
fuel. This remark is made in full knowledge of what has 
been accomplished in this direction by Messrs. Linton and 
Shaw, as well as by Mr. Richardson in England. This 
difficulty has, I think, been successfully overcome in the 
experiments conducted for the Petroleum Light Company, 
