July 8, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



35 



centuries of use. Nature has done much 

 for Egypt; engineering has done no less. 

 The barrage at Cairo and the stupendoiis 

 dam at Assiian conserve the rich tepid 

 flood of the Nile and pour it in golden 

 streams over a million acres of fertile 

 sugar-cane and cotton land. Instead of a 

 burning, barren waste, the land of the 

 Pharaohs has become more than ever be- 

 fore in history a garden of the gods. 

 Egypt may hate England, but to Sir Colin 

 Scott-Moncrieff, an English engineer, who 

 raised the barrage at Cairo and built the 

 Assuan dam, she owes more than she ever 

 did in ancient times to Rameses II. 



Across the Firth of Forth in Scotland 

 stretches a massive iron bridge with two 

 main cantilever spans, each longer than 

 the famous Brooklyn bridge. They were 

 pushed out horizontally from two canti- 

 lever shore arms without scaffolding or 

 false works, and with the roadbed soaring 

 300 feet above the water of the Firth. 

 M. Eiffel declared that it was in compari- 

 son an easy task to build the Eiffel tower 

 nearly 1,000 feet high, because it is vertical 

 and stands on a firm base ; but to push out 

 such a tower horizontally 300 feet above an 

 arm of the sea, and to balance it during 

 construction on the top of a tall pier, was 

 infinitely more difficult and hazardous. 

 This hazardous feat the late Sir Benjamin 

 Baker accomplished, and over his monu- 

 mental bridge 400 or 500 trains now pass 

 daily. It was this same plain but re- 

 sourceful engineer who designed the cylin- 

 drical ship that transported Cleopatra's 

 needle from Alexandria to New York. 



These daring, resourceful and intrepid 

 engineers are examples of those who did 

 their work for the most part in the last 

 century. They are typical of a class who 

 achieved fame and accomplished great 

 things with but little help from the uni- 

 versities. They learned their lessons in 



the great school of experience, and arrived 

 at success despite the lack of the early 

 opportunities now open to the aspiring 

 engineering student. They were not nar- 

 row specialists, but men with the broad 

 intelligence to consider a new and diificult 

 problem from all points of view, and to 

 employ for its solution any method which 

 their intellectual resources could command. 

 They were not mere copyists, who read 

 nothing beyond the headlines of their copy- 

 books, nor yet mere imitators content to 

 cull from the products of genius those that 

 could be adapted to the problems in hand. 

 They were rather the creators, whose edi- 

 fices, built on the foundation stones hewn 

 by others, have risen above the horizon for 

 many lands. 



If we inquire somewhat more minutely 

 into the qualities that make for leadership 

 in engineering, we shall find that thorough- 

 ness, originality and the habit of making 

 aU mental acquirements one's own are es- 

 sential. Originality is a gift, but it majr 

 be cultivated; the two other qualities are 

 certainly within the reach of every young- 

 man with normal mental endowments. 

 The habit of going to the bottom of every 

 subject investigated instead of contentment 

 with a superficial examination is one to be 

 assiduously cultivated. Each essay in con- 

 centrated effort makes mental fitness for 

 still deeper levels of penetration. 



Thoroughness is associated with sincerity 

 in the conduct of public works. The 

 greater undertakings which an engineer is 

 called on to design and execute are not the 

 ephemeral structures, made of "staff" and 

 designed to house an international exhibi- 

 tion; they are for posterity as well as for 

 his contemporaries. Noble examples of 

 thorough and sincere work have come down 

 to us from ancient times. One allows the 

 eye to follow with admiration the long 

 lines of aqueduct stretching across the 



