56 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



A History of the St. Louis Bridge. By C. M. Woodward, Professor of 

 Mathematics and Applied Mechanics, and Dean of the Polytechnic School 

 of Washington University. 4to, pp 400. Illustrated. G. I. Jones & Co., 

 St. Louis, Publishers. 



Long before the St. Louis Bridge was completed, Captain Eads, its illustrious 

 builder, closed a report to the Board of Directors with the following statement : 

 "When all of the many difficulties that have retarded this great work shall have at 

 last been surmounted and the Bridge becomes an accomplished fact, it will be 

 found unequaled in the important qualities of strength, durability, capacity and 

 magnitude by any similar structure in the world." 



That the bridge has become an accomplished fact and stands without a rival 

 in the world everybody knows ; but of the difficulties upon whose solution the 

 success of the bridge as a work of engineering depended, there is very little 

 knowledge. Doubtless in every great work new questions come up which have 

 never before presented themselves for practical answers ;. but it is doubtful if any 

 other work transcended experience at so many points. Of all these difficulties, 

 of the various attempts both successful and unsuccessful to overcome them, and 

 of the construction and erection of the bridge in every detail, Prof. Woodward 

 gives an account which cannot fail to meet the demands both of the professional 

 and non-professional reader ; the happy combination of a plain statement of facts 

 with an interesting story of events makes the work altogether sui generis. It is 

 complete, clear, concise and entertaining. The book is really much more than a 

 history of the St. Louis Bridge ; its principal claim to a high place among books 

 which last for all time is, that it has put together a great mass of experience in 

 engineering work which would otherwise have remained scattered and useless, be- 

 cause inaccessible, and these he has placed in form ready for use by all the world 

 whenever wanted. By a judicious arrangement of subjects and indices, the read- 

 er is enabled to find just what he may want without reading over much which he 

 may not want, so that the book must prove invaluable to engineers and scientists 

 as a work of reference. As a record of the planning and erection of a structure 

 which required at times consummate skill both of a head and hand and not un_ 

 frequently demanded immediate answers to questions upon which experience was 

 dumb, the book contains many chapters which would be valuable additions to 

 scientific literature if published separately. Some of these are deserving of special 

 mention. • 



The sinking of the piers was itself a great scientific work. When it is re- 

 membered that, owing to the treacherous nature of the river, which at times 

 cours its bed of the sediment which it had deposited years before, the great piers 



