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The Age of Oil 301 especially to Alberta, which province appears to be lying upon a huge natural gasometer. Medicine Hat is the centre of this industry, and the residents of that favoured city must certainly be accounted “ lucky ” when compared with the town-dwellers of these islands. There the housewife is able to buy gas for lighting and cooking at a cost of yd. per 1,000 cubic feet! In the majority of towns in Great Britain the commodity costs about four times as much. The small manufacturer is even better off, because he pays only one-half these rates, while if one is pre- pared to introduce an industry upon a large scale, one can make a long-term contract for an adequate supply at Jd. per 1,000 cubic feet! The gas is drawn from a depth of about 1,000 feet, and is tapped after the manner favoured in oil-well sinking. The enterprise is carried on by the city authorities, who have been granted rights to exploit and to supply the article throughout an area of 144 square miles. The gas rises to the surface at a pres- sure of about 500 pounds per square inch, but by means of regulating valves is fed to the domestic consumer at a pressure of 6 ounces per square inch. Curiously enough, the gas is not conveyed first to gasometers, but is supplied to the tap direct from the bowels of the earth—surely the acme of simplicity in gas supply ! One of the most remarkable features ot tne oil industry—one which is as striking as refining itself and the subdivision of the crude oil into products in- fluencing some 200 applications is the revolution which has been wrought in the transport of the oil. Where the conditions are amenable, cross-country