The Daily Express of Wednesday fills its front page with
an article describing a new invention in house- building made by Commander Burney. If it works in mass as well as in the laboratory, and we see no sort of reason why it should not do so, a veritable revolution will have taken place in what concerns man as much as even his food, the place where he is to be born, to die, and to eat his daily bread—his house. According to the Express a Burney house can be built in two or three days at the cost of £470 ! It is 'not, we are told, d bare-boned cottage but a house of refinement and fitted with labour-saving and hygienic devices. Commander Burney states that he has been enabled to do this through the invention of a new building material discovered by an English chemist, and through a system of construction which Commander Burney has himself devised. We shall return to the subject, but though we reserve judgment we see no essential reason why a sectional house should not be built in the time stated, and also no reason why a new material should not have been discovered. Certainly one is due, for bricklaying and masonry are no younger than the epoch of the Pharaohs.
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