55 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



The Colossus of Rhodes was thrown down by an earthquake sixty years after 

 erection. The brass made 900 camel-loads, or 720,000 pounds. 



The Washington Monument, is considered a grand work, but the work of 

 putting a new foundation under the old one was far more wonderful than the 

 building of the obelisk itself. (See Kansas City Review of Sceence and In- 

 dustry, January, 1885, page 501). This monument presents a smooth exterior 

 and is 555 feet in height; was commenced more than thirty-six years ago and 

 finished under Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, chief engineer and architect, 

 December 6, 1884. This pile of stone is hollow and capped by marble with 

 a conical apex of aluminum. The Pharos of Alexandria was 450 feet high 

 and built upon an island. Alexander the Great gave his order for this struc- 

 ture 332 B. C. to a Macedonian architect, Dinocrates by name, who also con- 

 nected the island with the mainland by an earth wall. This light-house differed 

 from the Washington Monument in being highly ornamented, the stone was 

 finely carved, columns and balustrades worked in the finest marble embel- 

 lished the exterior. It was built in several stories, tapering towards the top. 

 The ground floor and the two next were hexagonal; the next square, with towers 

 at each corner; the fifth to the top was round, with an exteral winding staircase. 

 The extreme top was open so that sailors could see its night beacons. The 

 Pharos at Alexandria was a work of art, a credit to Alexander who commenced, 

 and to Ptolemy Philadelphus who finished it. The Americans have built the 

 highest structure known to man, but it is barren of all art. There is quite a dif- 

 ference between building a lighthouse with carved marble on an island, and erect- 

 ing huge stones perfectly smooth by machinery, inland, even to the height of 

 555 feet. 



Both ancient and modern engineers and architects considered height as a 

 great objective point. The great Pyramid is 478 feet, Cologne (,'athedral is 510 

 feet. Rouen Cathedral 490 feet. The statue of San Carlo Borromeo, at Arona, 

 erected in 1697 was 66 feet high and the pedestal 40 feet. A marble statue of 

 Nero was said to be 120 feet high. The walls of Babylon were 378 feet high,^ 

 also 93 feet 4 inches thick and in compass 60 miles. Herodotus, who was at 

 Babylon, gives these figures; others give the height 50 feet as they were after the 

 time of Darius Hystaspes, who pulled them down to that height, that he might 

 conquer the city again more easily, if necessary. The Chinese wall was much 

 longer, being 1,250 miles, but very much inferior in width and height; only 20 

 feet high, 25 feet wide at the base and 15 feet at the top; about one-third of the 

 wall of China is dirt and rubbish, the rest being masonry, and it dates back to 

 220 B. C. 



The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built by Nebuchadnezzar to gratify 

 his wife Amytis. The gardens were over 400 feet square, built terrace above 

 terrace untd they were 27 feet higher than the walls, or 400 feet. The top wa& 

 sustained by a series of arches one above the other and each terrace was bound 

 by a solid wall 22 feet thick. On the top arches were first laid flat stones 16 feet 

 by 4, over these weeds and bitumen; then two rows of cemented brick covered 



