TO CUT CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1741, 16 October 1917, Page 4

TO CUT CHANNEL TUNNEL.

IN THIRTY-FIVE DAYS. A machine for tunnelling the English Channel in 35 days has been brought to the attenttion of the British Government by Mr John K. Kcnskcn, a civil engineer, of Fifth Avenue, who states that he has official approval of his scheme, says the Daily Express. The scheme contemplates boring .four tunnels by means of eight machines that will cut through earth and rock at the rate of 100 ft. per hour; and provides not only for a trackway in each tunnel, but a driveway along which motor-lorries could be driven from England to the supply bases in France. Mr Hcnckeu asserts that he can have the tunnels complete and ready for operation with in a few months’ time, and declares that should the scheme be carried through it would release most of the shipping now used between England and France, thus making available for other "uses more ships than could be built in the shipyards of the world in several years. He offers to finance the scheme by floating a bond issue, which could be paid off in a few years, and then to make the tunnels a present to Britain and Prance by the United States, and states that he has the sanction of the American Government in making this offer. Mr Hencken’s plan is to have eight of his machines in use, under engineers of the three nations concerned —one machine at each end of the four tunnels, and another set boring the approaches at the same time. In describing his machine, Mr Hencken says it consists of a series of swinging hammers rotating at a peripherial speed of about 100 ft. a second, striking several hundred thousand blows a minute on the space to be excavated, and pulverising the material “from Sinches in greatest dimensions down to impalpable powder.”

A resident of Christchurch, who has travelled between Christchurch and Dunedin regularly at different times for the past twenty years, and who has just returned from his latest trip, reports that stock, wheat, oats, and fruit on nearly all the farms seldom have presented a better appearance. “The autumn-sown wheat and oats,” he said to a Lyttelton Times reporter, “look exceptionally well. There is a good deal of water the other side of Oamaru, and it is keeping that part back, but about Pareora the country, perhaps, has never had brighter prospects as far as actual production is concerned.- Cattle and lambs, especially fat lambs, are in excellent condition. I have never seen such splendid fruit crops. The only thing we need now is suitable shipping arrangements.”