Science: Tunnel

Last week amid the cheers of peasants and hearty “Vive!'”s of black-mustachioed officials, largest undergound waterway in the world, was opened to traffic by Gaston Doumergue President of France (see p. 12).

For four and one third miles the Rove Tunnel, a canal 72 feet wide, 50 feet high, Cuts under the mountains of Nerthe from the port of Marseilles to the lake of Berre. Out of the mountains were hewn 2,500,000 cubic metres of dirt and rock to make a tube nearly three times as large as a two-track railway tunnel. It forms the most important link in a series of canals and dikes that will unite the Rhone River and Central France with Marseilles, buzzing port.