412 



NATURE 



[August 26, 1897 



immediate employment in some specific branch of the profession, 

 and up to this point his training is, necessarily no doubt, more 

 academic than in England, where the application of the prin- 

 ciples he has acquired at college is still generally left for the 

 office or works of the engineer. With this difference I am not 

 at present concerned, but I desire to reiterate what I have 

 already said to the effect that where, as in England, the student 

 of engineering has the opportunity of continuing his training in 

 the office or works, it is better that his limited college course 

 should cover all that is possible of the principles of those sciences 

 which may prove useful or necessary to him in after life, rather 

 than that any of them should be omitted for the sake of antici- 

 pating the practical application of certain others. 



The compulsory inclusion of the principles of all such subjects 

 as chemistry, electricity, geology, and many others, in science 

 courses intended for a future engineer is desirable not only 

 because a fundamental knowledge of them leaves open a very 

 much wider field from which the engineer may, as opportunity 

 offers, increase his knowledge and practice in the future, but 

 because many of such subjects are inseparable from an intelligent 

 understanding of almost any great engineering work. "Nothing 

 so difficult as a beginning " may be a proverb of rather too far- 

 reaching a nature, but it contains the suggestion of a great truth, 

 increasing in weight as we grow older, and the beginnings of 

 such collateral sciences should therefore find a place in every 

 engineering student's store of early knowledge. 



But after all, when these things have been done in the best 

 manner — when the scientific and practical training of the 

 engineering student has been all that can be desired, it is a 

 irvatter of general experience among engineers who have closely 

 watched the rising generation, that the most successful men in 

 after life are not produced exclusively from the ranks of those 

 whose college course has been most successful. No doubt such 

 men have on the average been nearer the top than the bottom, 

 but it is an undoubted fact that when we class them according 

 to their earlier successes or failures, we find the most remark- 

 able disparities. We find many who in academic days gave but 

 little promise, and we miss large numbers who promised great 

 things. These facts are not confined to the profession of the 

 engineer, but they seem to me to be accentuated in that profes- 

 sion. We shall no doubt be right in attributing the disparity to 

 differences of mental temperament and of opportunity ; but does 

 it follow that there are no faculties which may be cultivated to 

 reduce the effect of such differences? I venture to think there 

 are. I will instance only one, but perhaps the most important 

 of such faculties, and which in my experience among young 

 engineers is exceptionally rare. I refer to the power of 

 marshalling facts, and so thinking, or speaking, or writing of 

 them that each maintains its due significance and value. 



In the minds of many young engineers a mathematical training 

 undoubtedly has the effect of making it extremely difficult to 

 avoid spending an amount of time upon some issues out of all pro- 

 portion to their importance; while other issues which do not readily 

 lend themselves to mathematical treatment, but which are many 

 times more important, are taken for granted upon utterly insuffi- 

 cient data, and chiefly because they cannot be treated by any 

 process of calculation. I believe that nothing but well-directed 

 observation and long experience can enable one to assign to each 

 part of a large engineering problem its due importance ; but much 

 may be done in early training also, and I think ought to be 

 done, to lead the mind in, broader lines, to accustom it to look 

 all round the problem, and to control the imagination or the 

 natural predilection for one phase from disguising the real 

 importance of others. In the practical design and execution of 

 important works the man will sooner or later be recognised who 

 has the power so to formulate his knowledge, and on the same 

 principles has succeeded in so marshalling and expressing his 

 thoughts, as to convey to those by whom he is employed just so 

 much as may be necessary and proper for their use. 



Such considerations are not, it is true, a branch of mechanical 

 science, but being essentially important to the attainment of 

 maximum usefulness in the application of any science to the 

 various branches of engineering which are the chief ends and 

 aims of mechanical science, they are, I think, worthy of mention 

 from this chair. 



In proportion as the engineer possesses and exercises such 

 powers he will avoid those innumerable pitfalls to which im- 

 perfectly instructed ingenuity is so particularly liable, and to 

 which the Patent Office is so sad a witness ; and in the same 

 proportion must always be the useful outcome of the great 



NO. 1452, VOL. 56] 



schools of science which have become so striking a feature o. 

 the later Victorian Age. 



In relation to the results of applied science, I have spoken 

 only of the steamship ; add the telegraph, and I think we have 

 the most important tools by which the present conditions of 

 modern civilisation have been rendered possible. And more 

 than this, I think we have, in the lessening of space, and the 

 facility for intercourse they give, the chief secret of that marvel- 

 lous development of the empire which this year has so pleasantly 

 and so memorably signalised. Is " Our Lady of" the Sunshine 

 and " the Snows " no nearer to the mother land than sixty years 

 ago? Are the Australias — New Zealand — no nearer to both ? 

 Assuredly they are. Would British Africa, would the Indian 

 Empire have been possible to Britain on the principles and the 

 methods of Imperial Rome ? Unquestionably not. Then let 

 me say again that I claim for the objects and the work of 

 Section (j a magnificent record, an abiding power for the peace 

 of the world, and for the unity and prosperity of the great 

 empire to which we belong. 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 



npHE meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ■"■ ment of Science, held at Detroit August •9-13, though the 

 smallest since 1879, was, as many small meetings are, one of the 

 most interesting and important. 



Much disappointment was felt at the absence of President 

 Wolcott Gibbs, owing to the condition of his health and his 

 advanced age, which forbade him making so long a journey. In 

 his absence Prof. Wm. J. McGee occupied the chair. 



A feature of the meeting was the forecast of a jubilee celebra- 

 tion at Boston next year, for which Prof. Putnam, Secretary of 

 the Association, has secured a wealth of invitations from all 

 governmental, educational, and scientific organisations situated 

 at Boston ; and the election of Prof. Putnam himself, after a 

 quarter of a century of service, to preside at the great Boston 

 meeting, which promises to be a very great scientific gathering. 



A memorial address on the life and work of the late president 

 of the Association, Prof. Edward D. Cope, was delivered by 

 Prof. Theodore Gill, and is printed in full in Science. The 

 address concluded with the following reflections upon the place 

 which Cope must be assigned in the history of science : — 



" Among those that have cultivated the same branches of 

 science that he did — the study of the recent as well as the ex- 

 tinct Vertebrates — three naturalists have acquired unusual 

 celebrity. Those are Cuvier, Owen, and Huxley. 



" Cuvier excelled all of his tim.e in the extent of his know- 

 ledge of the anatomical structure of animals and appreciation of 

 morphological details, and first systematically applied them 

 to, and combined them with, the remains of extinct Vertebrates, 

 especially the mammals and reptiles. He was the real founder 

 of Vertebrate paleontology. 



" Owen, a disciple of Cuvier, followed in his footsteps, and, 

 with not unequal skill in reconstruction and with command of 

 ampler materials, built largely on the structure that Cuvier had 

 begun. 



"Huxley covered as wide a field as Cuvier and Owen, and 

 likewise combined knowledge of the details of structure of the 

 recent forms with acquaintance with the ancient ones. His 

 actual investigations were, however, less in amount than those 

 of either of his predecessors. He excelled in logical and forcible 

 presentation of facts. 



"Cope covered a field as extensive as any of the three. His 

 knowledge of structural details of all the classes of Vertebrates 

 was probably more symmetrical than that of any of those with 

 whom he is compared ; his command of material was greater 

 than that of any of the others ; his industry was equal to 

 Owen's ; in the clearness of his conceptions he was equalled by 

 Huxley alone ; in the skill with which he weighed discovered 

 facts, in the aptness of his presentation of those facts, and in 

 the lucid methods by which the labour of the student was saved 

 and the conception of the numerous propositions faciliated he 

 was unequalled. His logical ability may have been less than 

 that of Huxley and, possibly of Cuvier. He has been much 

 blamed on account of the constant changes of his views and 

 because he was inconsistent. Unquestionably he did change 

 his views very often. Doubtless some of those changes were 



