SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
in the past, is to be taken over by this Department. By arrangement 
with the Board of Agriculture, a series of five experimental cottages is 
being erected on land belonging to the latter body, the experience gained 
during the work to be utilized by those departments which are concerned 
with the provision of houses for agricultural workers. Among the re- 
searches which have been assisted by grants, a special reference is made 
to that undertaken by the British Fire Prevention Committee into the 
ability of various kinds of concrete, plain and reinforced, to resist the 
action of fire. This matter is so urgent, in view of the extensive con- 
struction with modern materials which will shortly be in progress, that 
the information obtainable is required as early as possible, and every 
effort is being made to complete the work. 
a 
HELIUM—A NEW CANADIAN COMMERCIAL ASSET. 
That Canada will soon produce helium in commercial quantities 1s 
the confident opinion of some of the best known of Canadian scientists. 
As a non-inflammable substitute for hydrogen gas used in dirigible 
balloons it has been found most valuable, and as a commercial product 
its value is enhanced by its comparative scarcity, Canada and the United 
States being, as yet, the only countries in which it has been found. In 
Canada it is derived from the natural gas fields of Southern Alberta. 
Professor J. C. MeLennan, Professor of Physics in the University of 
Toronto, who, during the war, acted as adviser to the British Admiralty, 
brought the attention of that body to the fact that it could be used as a 
substitute for hydrogen gas. Under the direction of the Admiralty, a 
series of extensive investigations and experiments were conducted under. 
the supervision of Mr. Eugene Coste, President of the Canadian Western 
Natural Gas, Light, Heat, and Power Company, at the Calgary plant of 
this corporation. The Canadian natural gas:‘in which helium exists was 
found to have an advantage, as it proved to be much more readily 
broken up into its constituent parts, the helium being extracted by first 
liquefying the methane, which is one of the constituents, then liquefying 
the nitrogen, which left the helium free. Experiments are now being 
condueted at the University of Toronto to discover if there are other 
uses to which helium can be put than solely as a buoyancy producer for 
lighter-than-air craft. In discussing the subject of helium before a, 
Parliamentary Committee, Professor J. C. McLennan recently said— 
“Tn 1903 it was observed that many ofthe natural gases of Canada con- 
tained a small percentage of helium. In the spring of 1916 it was 
found that the largest supply of natural gas in Canada, namely, that 
located at Bow Island, Alberta, contained a little over 0.36 per cent. of 
helium. This is comparatively small, and apparently an insignificant 
amount, and yet I may tell you that this wonderful gas was so rare and 
so costly that at pre-war prices the value of the supply of it which 
escaped into the air from the furnaces and stoves of Calgary and othei 
houses on ‘the pipe line was 50,000,000 dols. per day. By the develop- 
ments which have taken place during the past two years the cost of 
producing the gas in a pure state has been reduced, roughly, 100,000 
times. Owing to the advance, it became possible to utilize this gas in 
place of hydrogen in lighter-than-air aircraft. With the buildings and 
plants projected by the Admiralty and the authorities of the United 
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