coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

52 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
amount of fuel in tbeir bunkers and replenish
their supplies at one of the Pacific stations with
coal from the British Columbia mines.
Nasoga bay, the port for the proposed railway,
is said to be admirably adapted for a coal dis­
tributing point, the harbor being well protected
and capable of berthing large vessels. The esti­
mated cost of building a railway into the coal
fields, equipping the colliery, providing rolling
stock, buying eoal carrying ships, and general
organization on a working basis is $10,000,000.
Engineers who have surveyed the Groundhog
district report that sufficient coal could lie mined
from the field to supply all the naval squadrons
in the Pacific ocean with smokeless anthracite
coal, and that on account of its geographical loca­
tion, a port at the mouth of the Naas river could
compete with the Welsh and Pennslvanyia col­
lieries.
Nasoga bay is closer to the Orient and to Rus­
sia than any other sheltered harbor on tlie Pacific
adjacent to a supply of smokeless coal, and is
therefore more suitable for a coal distributing
center, ancl it has the advantage of an almost un­
limited supply of this valuable fuel nol tar from
the port, yvhich would facilitate transportation to
Hongkong, Yokohama, Vladivostock, Australia,
New Zealand, and other naval bases in the East.
The coal company in 1911 secured a charter from
the province for the Naas & Skeena Rivers railyvay.
The route follows the Naas and other rivers
140 miles northeasterly from Nasoga bay, which
is about 50 miles north of Prince Rupert. Sur­
veyors for the dominion government have ex­
pressed the opinion that there is a feasible route
for a connecting link from the Groundhog line to
the proposed Alaska railways via the headwaters
of the Skeena and Stikine rivers, thence along
the latter stream to the Dease river and lake
to the headyvaters of the Laird river through the
Atlin district to the Whitehorse, and thence by
the way of the Chisana pass into Alaska, along
the Tanana river into Fairbanks, the Copper river
country, and the interior of Alaska.
The Clinchfield Coal Corporation has contracted
with the Seaboard Air Line railway to deliver to
that road from the mines in Russell county, Vir­
ginia, 900,000 tons of steam coal. This coal Is
to be delivered so many tons per annum as it is
needed.
The shipments of coal through Lock No. 4,
Monongahela river, during March totaled 19,152,-
000 bushels, making the shipments for tlie quarter
45,484,000 bushels.
HELIUM IN FIREDAMP AND THE
RADIO-ACTIVITY OF COAL.
In a paper read before the Acadeinie des
Sciences, C. Moureu and A. Lepape, who had pre­
viously discovered the presence of helium in fire­
damp, gave particulars of their experiments in
estimating the amount of helium contained in the
gas of several collieries, says the Colliery Guard­
ian.
A "blower" at Anzin, yvhich furnished the gas
for the earlier researches, after continuing to
give out a regular quantity of firedamp for 12
years, is noyv exhausted; but an estimate of the
average volume of pit gas set free in the Anzin
collieries gives 30,000 cubic- metres of firedamp
per diem. Then, assuming this gas to contain
the same proportion of helium as that previously
analyzed by the authors (0.04 per cent.), the
volume of helium thus liberated daily would be
12 cubic metres, or 1,380 cubic metres per annum.
The "blower" at Frankenholz, which has been in
active operation lor seven years, furnishes 7,200
cubic metres of firedamp daily, and the totai
quantity liberated throughout the whole of the
mine daily is 37,000 cubic metres. With a helium
content of 0.027 per cent, (as shown by analysis),
a volume of 10 cubic metres of helium is produced
per diem, or 3,650 cubic metres per annum.
These quantities are enormous, and far in excess
of those found in the richest thermal springs—
e. g., 18 cubic metres per annum at Santenay and
34 cubic metres at N.ris.
In view of the close relationship between helium
and the radio-active bodies, the natuipl course to
follow- for obtaining information on the origin of
the helium in firedamp was to study, in the first
place, the radio-activity of these gaseous mixtures
and of the coal in which they originate. For the
purpose in view it was sufficient to investigate
the emanation of radium in firedamp, and that of
the radium and thorium in samples of eoal taken
from the vicinity of gas "blowers." These in­
vestigations were carried on with the aid of the
Cheneveau-Laborde electroscope, but the results
were practically nil. the emanations being too
small to reach the minimum (2.10-11 curies) the
apparatus was capable of detecting.
For determining tbe radium and thorium in the
coal samples, the mineral constituents of the coal
yvere first isolated, by incineration, and then dis­
solved by tne action of hydrochloric acid and
aqua regia, fusing the residue with alkali carbon­
ates, etc. The solution was then kept for a cer­
tain time in a closed vessel, and examined for
radio-activity to ascertain by calculation the
amount of radium in the coal. The thorium was
next determined by drawing the thorium emana-