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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[JVNK, 



The deficiency of good surveyors in England was readily supplied 

 from tlvjt large bodv wlioni, the Ordnance survey of Ireland had trained 

 up in the style of practice, which was Jof all others the best adapted 

 for the ordinary chain surveys of land. A great proportion of the 

 parochial surveys thruughoiit England and Wales has accordingly been 

 executed by these men, and it is impossible to deny that their pro- 

 ductions reilect great credit upon the school in which they were 

 trained, and upon the system which they had been taught to practice. 

 We are not able to decide whether all the objects required by the 

 >;ew Poor Law Act, and by that for the Commutation of Tithes have 

 been thus as satisfactorily accomplished as if the survey had been 

 executed by the native surveyors, whose local knowledge, one might 

 suppose, would in many respects have given them great advantages over 

 a body of strangers. But however this may be, the surveyors of England 

 have only to think themselves for all the injury which many of them 

 in no very measured terms impute to the immigration of their Irish 

 brethren. It is quite certain that if the native surveyors in England 

 had been competent themselves to execute these parochial surveys 

 ■with the necessary degree of accuracy, the value of the surveyor's 

 labour would not at this day have been reduced to the jjitiful rates at 

 •which it is now performed. Compel ition, in its proper place and 

 under certain necessary restrictions, is a very good aid wholesome 

 check upon arbitrary and extravagant charges, but there are circum- 

 stances connected with the competition to which these parochial sur- 

 veys have given rise, which press with peculiar hardship upon the 

 surveyors of this country. 



Admitting the truth of these remarks, it would appear that the sur- 

 veyors as a body have yet much to learn ; and in so far the publica- 

 tion of books to teach thein their business seems to be justified by the 

 ■necessities of the case. The misfortune however is that books may 

 be either useful or useless, and if the majority of surveying books 

 have been of the latter class, it would have been better by far if they 

 had never been given to the world. But in addition to the assistance 

 which many professed surveyors might derive from useful practical 

 works, the instruction of the rising generation claims particular atteri- 

 tion. The establishment of numerous colleges and schools of civil 

 engineering, and the appointment in these of professors of geodesy 

 and land surveying, mark well the general importance attached to the 

 education of the engineer in that part of his profession which relates 

 to the measuring ot'land, and to the other operations necessary before 

 the commencement of constructive works. 



Notwithstanding the great number of books which profess to treat 

 on surveying, there are few which comprise any thing like a course 

 of instruction in field engineering; and it is to supply this deficiency 

 that the professors of tliis art in several of the new colleges have 

 prepared for the use of their pupils, treatises intended to guide and 

 promote their studies. The three books mentioned at the head of this 

 article proceed from three of these professors, the author of the first 

 being the lecturer on practical surveying and levelling to King's Col- 

 lege, London, while Mr. Williams is the professor of geodesy in the 

 College for Civil Engineers, London, and Mr. Gregory is the resident 

 director of the College for Civil Engineering, Mining, and Agriculture 

 in Ireland. 



It gives us great pleasure to be able to speak in terms of unqualified 

 praise of Mr. Williams' book, which not only contains a mass of con- 

 densed and useful instruction on those branches of the subject which 

 had been treated by former authors, but also presents several chapters 

 of great practical value upon subjects which have hitherto been quite 

 untouched. The chapter on hill drawing and tliat on surveying as 

 applicable to the colonics are of this kind. The first is an admirable 

 ilescriplion of the system of normal contours adopted on the ordnance 

 survey of Ireland, and on the French cadastral survey. It is scarcely 

 possible to convey a clear idea of this system without quoting the 

 entire chapter, but in its application to the representation on a plane 

 surface of the natural irregularities of a country, it may be understood 

 by conceiving a number of perfectly horizontal lines to be traced 

 around a hill, and afterwards transferred to the paper on which the 

 plan of the hill is represented. These lines are termed normal con- 

 tours, and supposing the hill to be of a iierfectly conical shape, they 

 would appear on the plan as concer trie ciicles, whilst in hilis of 

 other shapes, tlie irregularly projecting parts would be shown by out- 

 ward flexures of the norma! contours, and the irregularly retreating 

 paits by inward flexures of the contours. The practice is to trace 

 these horizontal lines at equal vertical distances so that the steepness 

 of the slope at any particular point on the ]ilan is indicated by the 

 distance between tiie normal contours at that point. 

 i. "On the Irish survey, the plans with the normal contours traced 

 upon them are afterwards placed in the hands of field-parlies, whose 

 dui V consists in filling in the detail to produce physical relief, and give 

 exjression of form and character to the drawings." There is ob- 



viously no limit to the degree of fidelity ard value which maybe 

 given "to these representations. The contours for example may be 

 traced at very small vertical equal distances by means of levelling a 

 series of pickets in the same way as level stakes are fixed in railway 

 and canal works, and as the horizontal distance between the contours 

 may always be taken from the plan, and the veitical distance being 

 constant is always known, it is obvious that a section exhibiting the 

 levels of the country may be laid down in any direction from a plan 

 distinguished by this method of representing its irregularities. We 

 have thus merely glanced at this beautiful style of representation, but 

 we must refer our readers to the work itself for a clear and well written 

 description of the best method of executing it in the actual practice 

 of surveying. 



The chapter on surveying as applicable to the colonies will be highly 

 interesting at this time when so many young men are looking forward 

 to the em|)loyinent of their abilities in this distant field. 



It is proposed to divide the land into sections of 80 acres, comprised 

 in rectangle*, whose length is equal to twice their breadth, and of which 

 there would of course be eight in a square mile. But as in all new 

 countries the possession of water frontage is considered a great ad- 

 vantage, some contrivance is necessary to distribute this in an equita- 

 ble manner, and to overcome the irregularity which would be intro- 

 duced into the form of the allotments if those bordering on the rivers 

 were made of equal size with the others. This contrivance appears 

 admirably adapted to aiTord satisfaction to the purchasers of the sec- 

 tions, and to preserve uniformity and simplicity in the method of lay- 

 inf them out. It is impossible however to describe it without the aid 

 of^the diagrams which illustrate this part of the work. The author 

 states that he is " indebted for the information embodied in this chap- 

 ter, to the able report on surveying as applieahle to the colonies, made 

 by Captain Dawson, R.E. to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 

 in )84U." It were well if this gentlemanly habit of acknowledging 

 the sources of information, which Mr. Williams has every where fol- 

 lowed in his book, could by some means or other be made to possess 

 more favour in the eyes of authors. There is one admirable feature 

 also in Mr. Williams'' book which we must not omit to notice, namely, 

 that all the lumber about practical geometry and trigonometry with 

 which most of the surveying books are half filled has been discarded, 

 and he commences the book in a plain straight forward way, by show- 

 ing how to survey with the chain. When youths are set to learn even 

 the elementary parts of mathematics, such as geometry and trigono- 

 metry, it is not usual to put into their hands books on surveying for this 

 pur[iose, and we have always been at a loss to understand for whose 

 benefit— unless for that of the printer and the paper merchant— so 

 great a quantity ol elementary instruction in mathematics has pre- 

 ceded the introduction of the real subject of the work. In addition 

 to the two chapters we have noticed, Mr. Williams' book contains ex- 

 cellent remarks and instruction on the following amongst other sub- 

 jects— levelling with the mountain barometer — mining surveys — lati- 

 tude and longitude— maritime surveying, the whole of which are 

 treated in that masterly and original 'style which indicates a perfect 

 command of the subject in all its branches. 



Of the other two books before us we have little to say. A single 

 glance suffices to show that they are not the productions of practical 

 men. They abound in most of the faults from which Mr. Williams' 

 book is free. Abundantly prefaced by preliminary matter which may 

 be taken from any elementary course of mathematics, they have both 

 scrupulously followed the practice of those venerable and ancient 

 authors who wrote on surveying 100 years ago. Thus the pupil is 

 first t uioht to survey one field by it«elf, then two fields together, and 

 then a bolder spring is taken, and he may proceed to half a dozen or 

 to a large survey. All this is mere nonsense, because the principle on 

 which land is measured, particularly by the chain, is so perfectly sim- 

 ple that it is just as easy to practice upon 500 fields together as upon 

 one, two, or three. It will scarcely be believed that the examples 

 showing the method of surveying even these single fields are suchas 

 any schoolboy, or at least any lad who has had three days' instruction 

 iu the fiekl, would be utterly ashamed of. 



What will the practical surveyor say to such notes as this taken 

 from the example of a field book by Mr. Castle, for a survey of fields 

 near Maiden Lane. Line 578 ends at offset 98, at 908 on 1728. Line 

 579 ends at offset 23, at 820 on 1955. Line 734 ends at offset 21, at 

 483 on 968. We could scarcely believe, even on the actual eviilence of 

 our eyes, that the author meant these lines to terminate not in other 

 lines 'but at loose points determined by offsets. There is however no 

 donbtof the fact, because the planshowingHhe construction lines quite 

 confirms it. To those of our readers who have ever paid any attention 

 to the subject, no comment can be necessary on such a specimen of 

 surveying as this. , . , ■ ,u 



Both the works are full of those old woodcuts which adorn the sur- 



