810 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
properly belong to the speculative philosopher, and very often also of such 
a nature that the solution, synthetically, is easily discovered by a more 
extended knowledge of mathematics. 
In spite of the opinion of such a genius as Newton, the algebraic method 
is adopted of necessity in all mathematical books of a practical nature ; and 
scientific men adopt the same method. But discarded as Euclid's method 
and language are, for all practical purposes, there still lingers a conviction 
of their all-sufficiency for school-boys just as Mavor's spelling-book is the sine 
quá non of primary instruction. Our own University, that should take into 
account the drawbacks that boys here experience in acquiring details, as they 
are deprived of the advantages of morning and evening study, which boys at 
home possess, insists on the very words of Euclid. On the top of the paper 
on Geometry is printed, ** No symbols used to denote algebraic operations 
are to be employed in this paper." Which appears to mean, * Do not 
employ the signs used in practical mathematics, but the blessed, blessed 
words of the great Euclid." There is a great waste of time, as I have 
already shown, in learning to clothe a geometrical proof in Euclid's cumbrous 
drapery of words, which is a hindrance in entering on the actual study of 
mathematies. In fact, boys cannot compete creditably in the mathematical 
examination fixed by the same University for senior scholarships—if they 
must first go through so much to learn so little. If it is really intended 
that boys shall learn mathematies, we ought to have a text book of the 
elements of modern mathematics, and not the elements of the mathematics 
known 2,200 years ago ; or at least the public examiners should require no 
other propositions than those bearing directly on trigonometry, and the 
proofs to be expressed in the usual mathematical symbols. 
Anyone acquainted with trigonometry will perceive that this change 
would no more do away with the study of geometry than that the Russians 
all died from having their coat-tails cut off; but, on the contrary, there 
would be five mathematicians to one at present. 
Euclid's elements properly belong to the department of logic, and to 
that department the study of them should be confined in our public 
examinations. 
Art. XXIX.—On some points connected with the Construction of the Bridge 
over the Grey River at the Brunner Gorge. By C. H. H. Coor, M.A. ; 
Fell. St. John’s Coll., Cam. ; Prof. Math., Cant. Coll. 
[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 5th October, 1876.] 
Ir is not my intention to examine into the cause of the disaster which overtook 
the suspension bridge at the Brunner Gorge on the morning of the 28th 
