Section H. 

 ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 

 MR. R. J. SCOTT, A.M.I.C.E., 



Of Canterbury College, Chriskhurch, N'exv Zealand. 



THE DIRECTION OF PROGRESS IN ENGINEERING. 



When I accepted the office of president of this section, I did sa 

 believing that I should have the honor of personally oj)ening its 

 proceedings. Being, to my great regret, prevented from visiting 

 Adelaide, I must be content to express the hope that the Session of 

 this, the section of applied science, may be productive of pleasure 

 to members attending, and of benefit to the several branches of our 

 profession. The importance of these gatherings can hardly be 

 over-estimated, for at them the engineer is brought into close 

 contact with every branch of Science; and to-day, to be successful, 

 he must be, in the true sense of the term, a scientific man, quick to 

 grasp the practical importance and to devise means for the applica- 

 tion of those great discoveries, to the close sequence of which we 

 have grown so much accustomed. 



The march of progress in engineering is now so rapid that, on an 

 opportunity such as the present, it may be as well to pause in the 

 hurry of practical work and review the ground which has been 

 covered in the last few years, with the object of so directing our 

 course in the immediate future that we may occupy a position in 

 the front ranks of future advance. I propose, therefore, to-day to 

 consider the most recent developments in those branches of 

 engineering with which I am most familiar ; and, bearing in mind 

 that it is the commercial and not the purely scientific or interesting 

 aspect of an invention that determines its adoption, to venture to 

 point out the direction in which it appears to me that the light of 

 past experience suggests future improvement. 



Turning first to the cradle of all mechanical processes and 

 engineering operations — the workshop — we find that the intro- 

 duction of electrical welding has greatly facilitated the manufacture 

 of wrought-iron piping and the various small forgings used in the 

 gun, tool, and agricultural implement trades, whilst the fact that 

 there is no wasting of the material by this method is in itself a 



