The Cauvery Falls electrical power transmission works in India, which have taken just under two years to construct, will be brought into operation this month, says the London Electrical Engineer. The plant is designed to generate 4,500 horsepower for transmission over a distance of more than ninety miles to the heart of the Kolar gold fields, where it will be distributed among ten gold mines, the best-known of which are Mysore, Oore-gum, Nundydroog and Champion Reef. The transmission line, consisting of telegraph posts carrying six strands of copper wire, runs through extremely hilly jungles infested by the tiger, panther and bear, from which may be gathered some idea of the difficult nature of the work which had to be accomplished. The fact that the nearest railway station to the power station is some thirty miles distant, also led to considerable trouble in getting supplies, and tame elephants were requisitioned to help to convey the machinery from the railway to the center of operations. With the completion of the work this month, it is hoped that the greater part of the mining machinery on the Kolar gold fields will be worked by electricity.

The lifting power of any gas is the difference between the weight of the gas and the weight of the same volume of air. One cubic foot air at normal pressure weighs 1.29 ounces avoirdupois; one cubic foot pure hydrogen under the same conditions weighs 0.089 ounce avoirdupois. The difference is 1.2 ounces, which is the weight that one cubic foot of hydrogen will balance in the air. It will lift any weight less than that.

The announcement cabled from Europe a few days ago that Professor Marckwald of the University of Berlin had discovered a new element, is another link in a chain of discoveries which has been made chiefly by French and German scientists. Professor Marckwald is said to have separated a morsel of metal from uranium ore which emits radiation of a very active nature. The new metal, which evidently has not yet been named, has certain electrical properties, and is so very scarce that one gram of it is found in a ton of uranium ore. One might wonder how such an infinitesimally small amount of matter could have any wide significance, but it has, nevertheless, when taken in connection with other discoveries of a like nature. It concerns such an important matter as the production of light without heat and its commercial application.

Electro-chemical reactions depend upon the fact that the salts of metals are dissociated when in solution. When potassium chloride is dissolved in water, what actually exists in the water is a succession of free atoms of chlorine and potassium, with great electrical charges. Similarly, when silver or gold cyanide is dissolved in potassium cyanide solution, the atoms are free; the weaker the solution, the more perfect such free condition. As soon as the atoms of gold or silver lose their charge of electricity (as they do when an electrical current is passed through), gold, with its ordinary properties, is at once produced and precipitates itself in the solid form.

A short time ago it was stated that steps were being taken looking to the establishment of a system of wireless telegraphy on the Congo River in South Africa, as a result of experiments carried out in England at Withernsea. The London Electrical Engineer learns that fairly good progress has been made with the installation, but that the work has been greatly delayed by the loss of the vessel which was taking out some of the apparatus to South Africa. While awaiting the arrival of more material, however, the mast at Bahama has been fixed, and it is hoped to have the service in operation very soon.