258 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[August, 



exhibit the principle of concentration. " Tims nntiire works, and we 

 only endeavour to imitate Nature in her most successful eiforts, by the 

 alternate concentrated operation of the patent propelli^rs." 



We confess it appears to us there is much want of judgment and 

 much puerile jargon in all this. If the propeller be moved at 3i miles 

 per hour and the vessel at only 10, every stroke of the propeller will 

 put in motion a column of water of an area equal to the propeller, 

 ■with a velocity of 31 — 10 = 21 miles per hour; and as this water is 

 moved by the engine, a great part of the engine power is thus use- 

 lessly expended. Mr. Booth is probably not aware that by increasing 

 the velocity of the paddle-wheel by reducing the area of the float, 

 and thereby increasing the consumption of steam by the engines, and 

 consequently the power, the velocity of the ship is actually diminislied 

 in some cases. Twenty strokes of the engine per minute will thus 

 sometimes be less effectual than 15, though with the same pressure in 

 the cylinder in both cases ; and the cause is, the difference between 

 the speed of the paddle and the speed of the ship is then too great, 

 and much of the power of the engine is expended in throwing the 

 wafer back, instead of forcing the vessel forwards. As to the imita- 

 tion of the expedients of Nature, we must beg leave to insinuate that 

 Nature is best copied when the means devised are the most answer- 

 able to the purposes for which they are intended ; and that to copy 

 ducks' feet and horses' legs in works of art, merely because Nature 

 employs such agencies, is to depart from the princiiile by which 

 Nature operates, in the exact proportion of the fidelity' of the 

 imitation. 



We are unable to extend our remarks further, and there are many 

 heresies which must, therefore, remain unnoticed. We regret that 

 ■we have been compelled to be so uniformly censorious, but Mr. Booth 

 can well spare the reputation which the best of such schemes is able 

 to confer, and neither is nor needs to be a mimdicant of praise. He 

 will, therefore, we are sure, pardon us for stating our honest conviction, 

 that this is one of the very worst plans of propulsion that has ever 

 solicited the favour of the public. 



Transactio7!S of lite Royal Iit&titiile of Brilish Architects. Vol. I. 

 Part 2. London: Longman and Co., 1842. 



" Better late than never." After a gestation of six years (for 

 Part I. of this work bears the date of 1836), and a parturition of we 

 know not how many months since it was advertised as preparing for 

 the press, the representatives of the architects of Great Britain have 

 at length brought forth what they facetiously call their Transactions : 

 theirs, it must be presumed, upon some principle of appropriation, 

 since, out of the one hundred and eighty-five pages of which the volume 

 (or half volume) consists, less than thirty are the production of the 

 professional members of the Association by whom it is published. 

 And of this small contingent, by far the greater portion belongs to the 

 late and present honorary secretaries, upon whom it was perhaps 

 incumbent to contribute something ex officio — so at least it might be 

 supposed, judging from the easy tooth-pick sort of way, in which one 

 of these gentleman dispatches a subject upon which he might have 

 told us a great deal if he had pleased, and per contra, the laborious 

 illustration of an Arnott's stove! undertaken by the other. There 

 remain, therefore, only some half dozen pages, devoted to an inves- 

 tigation of that remarkable arch popularly called the stone beam, in 

 Lincoln Cathedral, which it is possible to consider as a free will 

 offering from any member of the profession, towards promoting the 

 objects which the Institute may have in view in the publication of their 

 proceedings, and for this we are indebted to Mr. Nicholson of Lincoln. 

 It is very certain, as every one knows who knows anything of the 

 proceedings of literary and scientific societies, that a paper maybe 

 most interesting and valuable as addressed to a general meeting and 

 accompanied by illustrations, and yet possess neither importance nor 

 novelty to entitle it to permanent record ; and yet it seems strange 

 that an interval of six years, during which something supposed to be 

 worth listening to has been read at every meeting of the Institute, 

 should have produced so little which on review should appear worth 

 preserving. It is impossible but that the eminent architects who appear 

 among the members of the Institute, should meet with incidents in the 

 course of their extensive occupations which might suggest valuable 

 communications on practical subjects ; but the fact is, that we find the 

 names of none of those professional gentlemen whose means of obser- 

 vation are the most enlarged, either in the body of this volume, or in 

 the list appended to it of nineteen papers read at the ordinary meet- 

 ings during the session of 1840-41, of which nineteen papers, be it 

 further remarked, eight only, exclusive of two translations, are claimed 

 by the professional members of the Institute. 



Wesavall this in no unkind feeling towards our professional friends. 

 We admire sincerely the spirited endeavours of the Institute to carry 

 out some of the most important objects for which the members pro- 

 fessed to embody themselves, and if they have not been supported by 

 all who are interested in their proceedings and who protit by them, 

 the fault is most assuredly not theirs ; but if the Institute seek to be 

 recognized by the public as a literary society, they must exhibit a 

 little more energy in the performance of the character they assume. 

 The profession in general may not be such ready writers as some 

 others, vet there are those among them who are sulliciently familiar 

 with the printer's devil; and unless some of them will show a dispo- 

 sition to contribute at least a reasonable quota to their own publication, 

 thev can scarcely expect the continuance of that aid from their honorary 

 members, and others not bound to the Institute even bi' that slender 

 tie by which alone they have been enabled to produce the volume 

 before us. If these gentlemen hold the hunonr of appearing in the 

 Transactions of the Institute at a discount, we disagree with them. 

 They raav go far without finding themselves in better company. 



These observations must be understood as totally independent of 

 our opinion of the volume itself, which is one of the most valuable 

 offered to the profession and the public for a lung time past. It con- 

 sists of ten papers or essays, illustrated by numerous engravings and 

 wood-cuts. The first in order is a dissertation "On the mechanical 

 construction of the Vaults of the Middle Ages," and the name of 

 Professor Willis is a sufficient guarantee that it has been treated in 

 the most able manner. The subject of stone vaulting in general is 

 one which has been hitherto much neglected by English writers, and 

 the works of foreigners, beginning with the celebrated treatise of 

 Philibert de I'Orme, published in 156S, have been entirely devoted to 

 the forms of vaulting peculiar to the classical and Italian styles of 

 architecture, and they have exhausted their ingenuity in devising 

 methods to meet all cases of obtaining, from plans and designs, the 

 forms of the individual stones of a building for the use of the mason, 

 and these operations have always formed a regular branch of archi- 

 tectural science in France, under the name of the "coupe des pierres." 

 The necessity of regular laws and systems to the Gothic architects in 

 the construction of their marvellous vaultings is obvious, and much of 

 their practice is probably mixed up with the problems of Efe I'Orme, 

 who treats his subject as one well known, and claims only the merit of 

 first reducing it to writing ; but of their peculiar methods nothing 

 has been transmitted to us. 



"It becomes, therefore," says Professor Willis in his introductory 

 pages, " a curious and interesting subject of inquiry to trace, from an 

 examination of the structures themselves, what geometrical methods 

 were really employed in setting out the work, and how the necessity 

 for these methods gradually arose. Independently of the value of 

 such investigations to the history of the science of construction, the 

 knowledge of the methods actually employed would greatly assist us 

 in the imitation of the works of each period. For the forms and 

 proportions of every structure are so entirely dependent upon its 

 construction and derived from it, that unless we thoroughly understand 

 these constructions, and the methods and resources which governed 

 and limited them, we shall never succeed in obtaining the master key 

 to their principles, and instead of designing works in the style of any 

 required age, we must content ourselves with merely copijing them. 



"The following paper must be considered as an attempt to sketch 

 out an investigation of this kind, and in offering it to the body of 

 practical men wdto are assembled in this Institute, I am not without 

 hope that some of them may be induced to collect facts and examples 

 by which this investigation may be carried on and completed. For it 

 will appear, as we proceed, that most of the facts required are of such 

 a nature that they can only be derived from the existing buildings by 

 the aid of scaffolding, minute measurement, and close observation, 

 which it is not often in the power of mere travelling observers to 

 obtain. 



"Now professional men are so commonly entrusted with the repairs 

 or restoration of these old structures, that if they would take the 

 opportunity of making the required observations in every case where 

 scaffolds were erected about a building, and if such observations were 

 transmitted to the Institute, a few years would sutTice to bring together 

 a body of examples from which general rules might be deduced. It 

 is only by comparing many examples that this can be done, for general 

 rules deduced from single instances are commonly worthless." 



The subject thus proposed the author follows out in four sec- 

 tions, devoted to the consideration of — the general construction of 

 the vaults of the middle ages ; the curvature of the ribs ; the ridge 

 ribs, liernes (or short ribs in decorative vaulting), and bosses ; and 

 lastly fan vaulting, upon which so much ignorance has been promul- 

 gated, and so much learning expended, both of which are dispelled 

 before Mr. Willis's simple and clear-headed investigation of facts. 



