750 REPORT— 1897. 



some encouragement if they worked •well, but it could not, in the nature of things, 

 amount to much more. This was a very necessary, perhaps the most necessary, 

 element of their training ; but except to the few who were so constituted that with 

 little or no guidance they could supplement their practical knowledge with the 

 study of principles elsewhere, it was entirely ineii'ectual in the production of that 

 well-balanced attitude of mind which any person who properly assumes the name 

 of an engineer must hold towards every engineering problem, great or small, which 

 he is called upon to solve. And so strongly have I felt this, that in the earlier 

 days, when there were fewer schools of practical science, and when their utility 

 was little understood, I required, wherever the matter was under my control, the 

 insertion into the articles of apprenticeship of a clause by which, at some incon- 

 venience to the office, the pupil was required to attend two sessions at the science 

 classes of Glasgow University, or at some other approved school of practical 

 science ; and without this condition 1 decUned to take the responsibility attaching 

 to the introduction into the profession of men who, in their earlier careers, from no 

 fault of their own, had not even acquired a knowledge of what there was to learn, 

 much less of how to learn it. 



More recently this course has generally become unnecessary ; for in West- 

 minster, at least, the young engineer rarely enters an office until he has acquired 

 some knowledge of what he has to learn. He enters, in short, at a much more 

 advanced age than formerly. When it is essential that he should be earning- 

 something soon after he comes of age, anything like a complete training is an 

 impossibility ; his work ceases to be general, and his practice is more or less con- 

 fined in a much narrower sphere than need be the case if the pursuit of further 

 knowledge continues to be his chief duty. 



But whatever course his circumstances may permit him to adopt, the difficulty 

 of gaining the reqiured knowledge in the time available is a serious one. This i» 

 not the place to inquire whether public school education in the mother country 

 is, or is not, the best for the general purposes of after life, or to discuss what 

 improvements may be made in it ; and of higher education in Canada I unfortu- 

 nately know little or nothing. Personally I admit the possibility of improvement 

 in the English system, and slowly but surely improvement is creeping in, as such 

 changes rightly find their way into institutions which have done so much for 

 Englishmen. In this particular I lean to the conservative side, and whatever our 

 individual views may be concerning the time spent on the study of Latin and 

 Greek, we should all probably agree that the school education of an engineer 

 should be as thorough and liberal as for any other profession. But for the sake of 

 a technical training to follow, this school education is often unduly curtailed, to 

 the great after-grief, in very many cases, of the successful engineer, and not 

 infrequently also of the less successful engineer who, in some phases of his pro- 

 fessional career, has been only too keenly alive to the self-reproach and sense of 

 inferiority which want of thoroughness or of time, or of both, at school has 

 brought upon him. 



But at some time the boy must leave school. Let us hope that he does not 

 aspire ' to control the great forces of nature ' ; but if he does we must ^make the 

 best we can of him. 



It is not desirable, at least so it appears to me, that even at this stage his 

 training should be specialised in view of the particular branch of the profession 

 or business he is likely to follow. The fundamental principles of any branch of 

 mechanical engineering are broadly the fundamental principles of any branch of 

 the profession. I hesitate to speak of civil engineering as if it were a separate 

 branch, instead of being, as it really is, the generic name of the profession ; but 

 the training demanded for the various branches of civil engineering in its narrower 

 sense is precisely the same as that required in its earlier stages for mechanical 

 engineering pure and simple. 



I shall make no attempt to review the large number of excellent courses which 

 are now available for the teaching of applied science in relation to engineering. 

 Experience of the results as judged by the students who have come directly under 

 my notice, and examination of many calendars, has aroused various thoughts con- 



