SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
been used in making the arsenic soluble. On the whole, he was inclined 
to believe the arsenical dip improved the wool, but it was exceedingly 
difficult to prove. 
ANTI-TICK CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA. 
More than 50,555 square miles were freed of the cattle fever tick in 
the United States during 1919. The Bureau of Animal Industry 
announced that on 1st December the quarantine against the movement. 
of cattle would be lifted from 46,921 square miles. An area of 3,634 
square miles was released on 15th September. The 1919 releases do 
not make the year, in point of territory placed in. the free area, the 
greatest year for tick eradication, but they indicate much consolidation 
work and “mopping up” in areas previously released. In 1906 the 
quarantine line extended from Virginia to Texas, and re-appeared in 
California. The attack against the parasite has driven it out of Cali- 
fornia, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Mississippi 
—completely the infected portions of the four States first named, and 
sufficiently in the last two to justify their release from quarantine. The 
territory released this year is in six States: 2,991 square miles in 
Alabama, 9,299 square miles in Louisiana, 8,847 square miles in ‘Texas, 
8,130 square miles in Arkansas, 6,942 square miles in Georgia, 4,346 
square miles in Oklahoma. 
NEW SPECIFICATION FOR INSULATED CONDUCTORS. 
The British Engineering Standards Committee have issued a new 
specification for insulated conductors for electric light and power pur- 
poses which differs radically from its predecessors. The basis of this is 
a table giving a series of thirteen wires, ranging in diameter from 
.0076 inch to .1030 inch. From these wires are drawn up a table of solid 
and stranded conductors ranging in area from .0010 square inch to 
1 square inch, there being twenty-four sizes. _ Corresponding to the 
standard, ordinary conductors are the tables of flexible conductors. The’ 
first is for flexible cords, and comprises six sizes, which are substantially 
those now in ordinary use. The final table is of flexible standard con- 
ductors corresponding in area to the areas of the main table. 
ALCOHOL FROM COKE OVEN GAS. 
In a paper-read by Mr. Ernest Bury, of the Skinningrove Iron and 
Steel Works, to the Cleveland Institution of Engineers, he stated that 
at the Skinningrove works he had succeeded in extracting ethelene, 
alcohol, and their derivatives on a commercial scale from coke-oven gas. 
The work is still, to some extent, in the experimental stage, but Mr. Bury 
has succeeded in producing a perfect motor spirit. The world’s liquid 
fuel resources are strictly limited, whilst the consumption is growing by 
leaps and bounds. The practical working of Mr. Bury’s process at the 
Skinningrove works, where 5,800 tons of coal are carbonized per week, 
has revealed an average yield of 1.6 gallons of alcohol per ton of coal 
carbonized, and as the total weight of the coal which was reduced to coke 
in Great Britain in 1918 was 14,635,000 tons, the application of this” 
process to the whole of this coal would yield, according to Mr. Bury’s 
calculation, 23,416,640 gallons of alcohol, representing, at 2s. per gallon, 
78 
