454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The War Department is especially ungenerous in its designation 

 of the civilians who are engaged upon its engineering work. Perhaps 

 in order to keep this numerous class in the background, as far from 

 the public appreciation as possible, and thus to increase the promi- 

 nence of the engineer officers, it is ordained that, with one or two ex- 

 ceptions, no civilian shall be known other than as an assistant in some 

 shape or other. Upon the geographical surveys, the topographers 

 have been classified as topographical assistants, and the meteorologists 

 under the cumbersome head of meteorological assistants. Since the 

 topographers, or, more properly, geographers, conducted the triangu- 

 lation, planned the surveys, and made the maps, it is difficult to see to 

 whom they rendered assistance. Certainly not, in general, to the army 

 officers, whose names appear conspicuously upon the maps as " execu- 

 tive officers and field astronomers." Though a Humboldt, or a Peter- 

 niann, or a Guyot, should tender his services to the War Department 

 as a maker of maps, he would probably be doomed to go down to poster- 

 ity as a " topographical assistant." As such the public would picture 

 him, if it thought of him at all, as sharpening the pencils and carrying 

 the note-books of his superior officer ! To the scanty recognition of 

 civil co-operation, and to the consequent half-hearted interest and 

 support of the civilians, is largely due the discontinuance of the sur- 

 veys in question. The prestige of the Engineer Corp:,, upheld by the 

 good work of the civil engineers, would have carried them through 

 any crisis, if the latter class had seriously cared to continue the part- 

 nership longer, and if the scientific world had approved of so unequal 

 a distribution of rewards as prevailed there. 



When a man is appointed a civil engineer in the navy there are a 

 few of that profession employed at the several navy-yards throughout 

 the country he is entered upon the register under that name, he 

 wears the imprint of his title upon his uniform, and, among his friends 

 or in the witness-box, he has no difficulty in explaining his occupation. 

 But in the army, or, rather, under the army, since he is not recognized 

 as a component part of the organization, the position of the civil en- 

 gineer is an exceedingly irregular one. There are several hundred 

 civil engineers employed by the War Department upon the extensive 

 river and harbor improvements constantly in progress. These are 

 classed indiscriminately as assistant engineers, although they may have 

 practical direction of the works upon which they are engaged. Some- 

 times their official mail comes to them addressed " U. S. Assistant En- 

 gineer," sometimes " Assistant U. S. Engineer," thus revealing a doubt 

 or a carelessness even at headquarters concerning their appellation. 

 As the officers of the army, by whom these things are regulated, are the 

 greatest of sticklers in regard to their own rank, and there is no breach 

 of military etiquette more serious than the mutilation of a title or the 

 omission of a brevet, we would naturally expect from them greater 

 consideration in their intercourse with civilians ; and, if a man is a civil 



