BROWN COAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 February 1922, Page 5

BROWN COAL.

CANADA AND AUSTRALIA INTERESTED. GREAT EXPLOITATION SCHEME. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Feb. 25. Professor Bone, of the Imperial College of Science, lecturing before the Royal Society of Arts on brown coals and lignites, emphasised their importance to the Empire. He dealt especially with the Morwell, German, Canadian and Malayan deposits. Morwell coal was not very different from dried Irish peat, although possessing somewhat higher carbon contents and greater calorific values. While ‘brown coal was a matter of indifference to Britain, it was of the highest importance to Canada and Australia. The Canadian Government, recognising this, had appointed a lignite utilisation research board to carry out investigations, and the results should be vitally important to Western Canada, where it was proposed to organise a great scheme for exploiting the immense tertiary and cretaceous coal resources of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Great as the Canadian deposits were, the Australian were simply astounding, nbtably those at Morwell, Gippsland and Oa-pe Otway. These deposits were of phenomena] thickness, without parallel in the world, and there was a wonderful store of energy awaiting the service of man. He anticipated that within a few years not only would Melbourne derive the whole of its electric power from Morwell, but the State railways would be electrically worked from the same de-posits.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.