556 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 
Section G.—ENGINEERING. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.—PROFESSOR ARCHIBALD Barr, D.Sc., 
M.Inst.C.E. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
One of the great engineers of the past, Leonardo da Vinci, prefaced a collection 
of observations on various themes, including the Mechanical Arts, with the 
remark : ‘Seeing that I cannot choose any subject of great utility or pleasure, 
because my predecessors have already taken as their own all useful and neces- 
sary themes, I will do like one who, because of his poverty, is the last to arrive 
at the fair, and not being able otherwise to provide himself, chooses all the things 
that others have already looked over and not taken, but refused as being of little 
value. With these despised and rejected wares—the leavings of many buyers—I 
will load my modest pack and therewith take my course.’ These words describe, 
with some approach to exactitude, the position in which I find myself, and may 
form a fitting introduction to an Address that will be discursive rather than 
systematic, and perhaps more critical than constructive. 
It may be less true to-day, than it was four hundred years ago, to say that all 
important matters concerning the existing state of the mechanical arts have been 
dealt with in spoken or written addresses. Each year there might be found 
sufficient subject-matter for a general survey of the ground that has been covered 
or a sketch of what lies before us. But each important advance is nowadays 
recorded as soon as it is made, and I do not feel that I have any special call 
to assume the role of the historian, nor can I claim any right to don the mantle 
of the prophet. 
A President of this Section, who is not disposed to deal with the general 
aspects of the progress being made in the department of science allotted to us, 
can usually find a large enough subject for his Address within the limits of that 
part of our wide field with which his own work has been more particularly 
identified, and it might be expected that I would devote my Address to a dis- 
cussion of the conclusions at which I have arrived during thirty-six years of 
practice and experience in the teaching of mechanical science. But so much has 
been said of late on the training of engineers, and so many divergent and even 
irreconcilable opinions have been expressed regarding the lines such training 
should follow, that I feel sure I shall be relieving the apprehensions of some of 
my audience if I begin by stating that I do not propose to inflict upon you a 
discourse on that threadbare theme. There are limits to the endurance even of 
those who practise a profession well calculated to inculcate the virtues of patience 
and forbearance. 
When we have as President of the Section one who has broken new paths in 
the exploration of the territory assigned to us, or to whose labours the fruitful- 
ness of some corner of the domain may be chiefly attributed, we would hardly 
be disposed to tolerate the omission from his Address of an account of his own 
