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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 347. 



the great shipbuilding ports, and this local 

 industry, moreover, has lately shown en- 

 couraging signs of revival, no young man 

 in the Thames shipbuilding yards or marine- 

 engine works can get access to instruction 

 in his profession. 



For civil engineering some small pro- 

 vision exists of high quality. But the 

 instruction is limited in scope, given almost 

 entirely in the daytime, and barred to 

 most students by high fees. The position 

 of London, as the capital of a vast empire, 

 the center of organization for important 

 engineering enterprises all over the world, 

 and itself the scene of great municipal and 

 capitalistic works seems to call for a con- 

 siderable extension in the scope and variety 

 of instruction in civil engineering. In con- 

 nection with this need may be specially 

 mentioned the lack of any systematic in- 

 struction for the large and growing class of 

 municipal engineers ; the absence of any 

 school of railway engineering, dealing, 

 among other things, with permanent way 

 construction ; the need for specialized train- 

 ing in dock and harbor work, for which 

 London is the natural center, and, indeed, 

 the total lack of any adequate treatment of 

 hydraulics (for which alone Cornell Univer- 

 sity has a fully- equipped and well-endowed 

 department) . Moreover, this is perhaps the 

 place to notice that (beyond one or two 

 courses of professional lectures) London 

 has nothing in the nature of a school of 

 architecture. It contains far more archi- 

 tects than auy other city in the world, and 

 annually adds a larger quota to the pro- 

 fession than any other center. But it 

 leaves them to pick up their art in the old- 

 fashioned way, and makes no organized 

 attempt to provide modern instruction. 

 The result is that, whether on the con- 

 structive or the artistic side, we lag far 

 behind the United States, France and Ger- 

 many. 



The provision for electrical engineering, 



though lately much increased, is still inade- 

 quate, both in extent and in variety. Above 

 all, there is lacking any adequate opportu- 

 nity for research and instruction in the more 

 advanced and newer developments. How 

 much of the future of industry may not 

 turn on the proper working out of the pos- 

 sibilities of high-tension transmission and 

 polyphase currents? Where, too, is our 

 school of electric traction, which will enable 

 us to keep, at any rate, some part of this 

 rapidly-growing industry in our own hands ? 

 It is not to our credit that, though Great 

 Britain supplies the original ideas, the 

 greater part of the equipment of the ' tube ' 

 railwaj'S has to be made in the United States 

 and Switzerland. 



Dealing with the matter geographically, 

 we may say that, if all the existing centers 

 were enabled freely to expand to meet the 

 growing demand, and brought up to a satis- 

 factory standard of efficiency and compre- 

 hensiveness, the greater part of the six 

 millions of population would, as far as me- 

 chanical and electrical engineering are con- 

 cerned, be adequately served. There would, 

 however, still remain in the outer suburbs 

 such important centers of population as 

 West Ham, Croydon, Willesden, and Tot- 

 tenham, containing in the aggregate over 

 three-quarters of a million people, or as 

 many as all Glasgow, needing engineering 

 schools ; and even within the county area 

 additional engineering schools are required 

 in the neighborhood of Hammersmith, 

 Hackney, and St. Pancras. If these were 

 provided the number of engineering centers 

 within the radius would be raised approxi- 

 mately from 15 to 20, and it may con- 

 fidently be predicted that the number of 

 engineering students above matriculation 

 standard could be, within two or three 

 years, certainly trebled (J,, e., raised from 

 600 to, including all departments, at least 

 2,000) ; and would then still be far behind 

 the number for Belgium or Saxony, with 



