TECHNICAL EDUCATION 177 



institute new degrees, and the opposition has come from men of 

 different classes for instance, from Conservatives, who object to 

 new degrees because they are new, and who fear a degradation 

 of academical distinctions. To these opponents I would point 

 out that engineers now form a real new learned profession, as 

 much entitled to academical recognition as the older professions 

 were when the old degrees were instituted. To institute new 

 degrees in the old universities is to carry on the old traditions 

 unbroken ; and if this be not done, then the new professions 

 will create schools and distinctions of their own, and the old 

 institutions will fall as old trees fall when their growth is 

 ended. The strictest watch should, however, be kept, to ensure 

 that the new degrees are, if anything, harder to attain than the 

 old ones. 



The second class of opponents are those who say that no 

 examinations can test the proficiency of a professional man. I 

 have very little doubt that this was the feeling of some of the 

 older medical men when degrees in medicine were first insti- 

 tuted ; but if engineers could only be examined after the fashion 

 of some recent examinations the papers of which I have read, 

 I should cordially agree with the opponents of the measure I 

 now support. 



As an illustration of my meaning, I will take the liberty of 

 criticising one point in the examination which is to be held for 

 the Whitworth scholarships, under the management of the 

 Science and Art Department. This examination might be ex- 

 pected to correspond with that which all should take before enter- 

 ing an engineer's office or workshop. Its object is to select those 

 youths who, by two or three years of additional study, are likely 

 to become useful engineers. Consequently, we find a list of 

 subjects closely agreeing with that which I proposed for our 

 University examination ; and among these subjects is ' Applied 

 Mechanics.' The French and Professor Rankine mean bv 

 Applied Mechanics the application of the purely theoretical 

 mechanics to the problems which occur when dealing with 

 material bodies. Thus Professor Rankine's book on Applied 

 Mechanics treats of the principles of statics, the theory of 

 structures, the strength of materials, kinematics, the theory of 

 mechanism, and the principles of dynamics all things which 

 VOL, II. x 



