502 



SCIENCE, 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 42. 



reraarkably interesting paper on modern 

 glacial striae, of which unfortunately no re- 

 port is available: Mr. W. "W. Watts con- 

 tributed a note on the basins of soroe of the 

 tarns near Snowden. One verj' small one 

 seemed to occur in a rock basin, one was 

 dammed at both ends by scree and stream 

 detritus, and two larger lakes, Glaslyn and 

 Llyn Llydaw, were either confined in true 

 rock basins or else were not more than 

 about 40 feet deep. 



A large number of excursions was planned 

 and carried out chiefly under the leadership 

 of the President and Mr. Clement Eeid. 

 The various localities for the Coralline and 

 Eed Crag deposits were visited and the re- 

 lations of the deposits studied, and the last 

 two days were devoted to a pretty thorough 

 examination of the remarkable and classical 

 glacial deposits of Cromer on the coast of 

 Norfolk. W. W. Watts. 



Geological Suevey, Londox. 



A COURSE IN ASTRONOMY FOB ENGINEER- 

 ING STUDENTS. 



Ajt the present time our engineering 

 schools tend more and more strongly to 

 technical curricula which deal with pro- 

 fessional subjects to the exclusion of non- 

 professional matters, and the author of the 

 present paper, approving this tendency, pur- 

 poses to state here his conception of a brief 

 course in spherical and practical astronomy 

 as a part of the technical training of the 

 future engineer. The purposes of such a 

 course should be: 



(A;) To give the pupil some training in 

 the precise use of instruments of precision. 

 His course in surveying has given the stu- 

 dent an introduction to the use of such in- 

 struments, but the nature of that work and 

 the circumstances under which it is done 

 preclude the i)lacing of anj^ considerable 

 emphasis upon precision of results. To de- 

 mand all the accuracj' which a transit or 

 level can be made to furnish is in general 



bad surveying practice, but only the man 

 familiar with refined methods of instru- 

 mental work is competent to form an intel- 

 ligent judgment of the manner in which 

 those methods should be modified and their 

 rigor relaxed in any given case. The 

 course in astronomj^, therefore, comes as 

 a supplement to that in surveying, and the 

 pupil should now be taught : 



(a. ) That it is his business in each of his 

 problems to obtain from his instrument all 

 of the precision that it can be made to 

 furnish. 



(b.) He should be taught to obtain this 

 precision with a minimum expenditure of 

 care and time. The instinctive tendency 

 of the student mind to execute every part 

 of a given task with equal painstaking 

 needs to be curbed and the pupil taught 

 what things require minute care and what 

 may be, and ought to be, dealt with in a 

 summary manner. 



(c.) As a subordinate matter he maj^ be 

 introduced to the use of instruments of a 

 higher grade than those employed in his 

 course in surveying. 



(B.) A second purpose of the course is to 

 train the student in the art of computing 

 (ciphering). Model forms of record and 

 reduction for his several problems should 

 be placed before him and the advantage of 

 compact and orderly arrangement of all 

 numerical work should be strenuously in- 

 sisted upon. 



(C.) As the concrete outcome of the 

 above training, the student should acquire 

 the abilitj^ to determine latitude, time and 

 azimuth with such instruments as he will 

 use in the ordinary practice of civil engi- 

 neering. Tlie sextant and engineer's tran- 

 sit furnish quite as good an equipment for 

 the course here contemplated as the elabor- 

 ate outfit of an observatory. The latter 

 belongs to a more advanced stage of study. 



The details of a course of studj' such as 

 is above suggested depend upon the amount 



