SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
ROAD WORK AFTER ARMISTICE. 
When these preliminary steps had been practically conipleted, 
and the Department and the States were about ready to proceed 
vigorously with the actual construction of roads, the United States 
entered the war. It soon became necessary greatly to curtail highway 
building because of the difficulty of securing transportation, construc- 
tion materials, and the requisite services. After the armistice was 
signed, arrangements promptly were made for the active resumption 
and vigorous prosecution of road work in all sections of the country, 
not only with a view to repair the damage wrought by the heavy traffic 
forced upon their highways during the war, when maintenance opera- 
tions were seriously interfered with, but also to provide adequate trans- 
portation facilities to serve the increased needs of agriculture and 
industry. Recognising also that road-building activites would furnish 
suitable employment for many unemployed men during the period of 
transition from war to peace, the Congress, at its last session, accepting 
the recommendation of the Department of Agriculture, appropriated 
$209,000,000, in addition to the $85,000,000 provided by the original 
Act, for the extension of road construction in co-operation with the 
States, and also made some important amendments to the Act. The 
definition of the kind of roads that can be constructed was greatly 
broadened, and the limitation on the Federal contribution for any one 
road was increased from $10,000 to $20,000 a mile. These amend- 
ments, it is stated, have greatly facilitated consideration of, and action 
upon, the road projects submitted. by the State Highway Commis- 
sions. There is now no special obstacle to the construction in the 
different States of the Union of the roads which serve the greatest 
economic needs. 
FUEL ECONOMY—BY-PRODUCTS FROM LIGNITE. 
Important progress is being made in Canada in investigating the 
possibility of obtaining valuable volatile products by the carbonization 
of lignites—low-grade coals of which there are large deposits in the 
Prairie Provinces. The problem of coal-supply in southern Saskat- 
chewan and Manitoba is serious, and though there are large available 
supplies of lignite, they contain over 30 per cent. of moisture, and their 
calorific value is less than 4,000 calories per gram. The carbonization 
experiments were divided into small-scale laboratory tests, large-scale 
laboratory tests, and semi-commercial tests, the primary object of the 
investigations being, not to design a commercial plant, but to obtain 
the accurate data essential for the scientific design and control of such 
a plant. 
Results of the small and large scale laboratory tests have recently 
been published in the Report for 1918 of the Mines Branch of the 
Canadian Department of Mines, but information regarding the semi- 
commercial tests is not yet available. As regards tar-oils, the best 
results were obtained with slow heating, at a temperature of about 550° 
C., the yield being about 5.9 gallons per short ton of moist coal as 
charged. This gave a carbonized residue of 890 lbs., together with 
10.4 Ibs. of ammonium sulphate, and a gas yield of 2,750 cubic feet. 
138 
