chemistry by our mechanical engineers during their freshman year, would, I think, make us liable to the charge of misrepresentation by that large and earnest class who think that "pactice" is synonomous with "practical work," and that "practical work" means only "shop work," or its equivalent, farin work.

We have no workshops for teaching the handicraft of the trades, nor land for teaching the art of farming. We are, therefore, especially liable to a certain kind of hostile criticism by those who think that the especial function of these institutions is to teach the trades and occupations. The figures derived from our classes, stated in the terms of your schedule, would tell only a part of the truth, and tell it in such a way as to give a handle for use in unfair criticism whichever way we state them. If we do not tabulate all our laboratory work as "practice" we do not conform to your schedule. If we make the figures include, as "practice" in the technological courses, all our laboratory work, it makes it look as if we were doctoring the figures for the purpose of making our course seem less "theoretical" and we want to avoid the appearance of dodging these questions. We believe our method is a good and sound one and are willing that it stand squarely upon its merits.

Again, as to the "hours a week devoted to." In our system of instruction, except for recitations and lectures, we measure little by hours. We have not a single requisition which can be "made up" or "worked off" in any specified number of hours.

There is a minimum of work which a student must do before he can get a degree. But this is not measured by the number of hours spent in the class room or laboratory although a record is kept of attendance and any considerable irregularity is not tolerated.

A pet idea in our system and methods is to give each and every student a chance to do his best, to encourage acquisition by work rather than to consume time by the hour. The facilities of our class rooms and laboratories and the division of the classes into sections are in accordance with this idea and largely directed to this end. The laboratories are open much beyond the times of "required" attendance. The minimum requisition for a degree does not represent in any sense the number of hours devoted per week to any subject. So far as hours represent anything. it is the minimum attendance of the very poorest student who ultimately graduates. Consequently, we have never yet compiled and published, even for our own use, a complete tabulated statement of the number of hours per week required for all the various sections of this school other than the regular programme of daily exercises. Such a table might be made, but if we made it, it would be with the understanding that it was for the lowest possible grade of work allowed.

Again, the Sheffield Scientific School is a department of the university in which department none of the students are pursuing a classical or merely literary course in the sens in which these terms are used in classical colleges. Yet I think that it would be untrue as well as misleading to class them all as "technological" students, although everyone is pursuing some of the studies classed as technical in the great majority of the land-grant colleges.

I have given the figures which are called for in the last column, but when tabulated along with the figures from many other colleges, as from Cornell, for example, are very misleading. In Cornell, and, I think, all those colleges where there is also a classical course, the technical and scientific courses are distinct or recognized from the very entrance. Here the studies are the same for all our students during the freshman year. The classes here do not differentiate into courses until the beginning of the second year, therefore the numbers I have given include only those in the last two years. They do not include the 137 undergraduates who are not officially in the courses specified, although they are purusing the studies required as a part of the technical courses. Nor does it include the 29 graduate students who are pursuing the higher studies supplemental to the undergraduate courses. The total is therefore smaller by over 160 than the same students would be tabulated in most of the colleges.

I have gone at length into this question, and I think you will see the force of the difficulties and the importance of the matter, especially in these times, when so many of these institutions are being made the subject of sensational criticism and hostile attack.

Question 8. (a) This is no State appropriation but the income from the fund derived from the land grant of 1862. The State still holds that, paying us only the income. We receive no State appropriation. (b) This is as it appears from the books of the college treasurer.

Question 9. No part of this question can be satisfactorily answered. I will remark on the three items.

The Sheffield Scientific School is but a department of the univer ity, and all of its instruction was carried on in buildi gs belonging to "The Pr ́s dent and Fellows of Yale College" for the first twenty-five years of its existence. Now, three large and several small buildings are used by this department exclusively, but much of the instruction goes on in buildi. gs whose use is shared by other departments of the university. A part of the drawing is taught in the Street Art School; geology, mineralogy, paleontology, and zolegy in th Peabody Museum which contains the university collections belonging to these sciences. Then, too, the university library, gymnasium, reading room, etc., tc., a eused by our students in common wi h the rest of the universi y. To include all these in the property of the Sheffield Scientific School would be untrue and would grossly overrate its riches and possessions. On the other hand, to leave them all o it would be to untruthfully unde: rate its facilities for instruction. As a art of the university, this school gets more or less benefit of all the varied possess ons which constitute the material part of the university, the ownership of which is peculiarly complicated. They represent the growth of two centuries. Of the buildings in our exclusive use, two were originally built for other purposes, and later adapted to our use. I have never seen any inventory of the grounds and buildings of the university, as a whole, nor any attempt to estimate what the value of those of our department would be without the others.

(b) The same is true of apparatus and collections; some belong to the Scientific School especially and some belong to the University. I am not aware that any attempt at an inventory has ever been made, and any estimate would be but a rude guess. The collections are largely the collections of the University and represent the accumulations of about a century. The apparatus in the exclusive use of the Scientific School represent the accumulation of about fifty years. A set equivalent to the latter could probably be got together for $40,000, bu: it cost originally very much more than that. Some of it now has merely a historical or sentimental value, hard to estimate in money, yet it has still an educational value.

(c) "Productive funds." Here the answer is still more difficult, as it is more complicated. Some belong to the Scientific School, some to the University, a portion is for special purposes, others for general purposes. We now have the income of some university funds, which we may not have when certain university instruction is given in some other way. We have some funds of our own; we share in the use of others for general university uses; we share in still o her spccial endowments; and any statement we might make would be a master of bookkeeping rather than an exhibit of the capital of the Sheffield Scientific School. The treasurer's report gives the names and status of the various funds, but of some of these funds even he does not attempt to decide whether they should be considered in this schedule as belonging to "The Sheffield Scientific School" or Yale College" or "Yale University." They are in the possession of the Yale corporation for certain uses. The University can apply the income for instruction or use in the department which it thinks fulfills most nearly the objects intended by the donor. I have spent some time with the treasurer trying to compile satisfactory answers, but I can not answer either division of this question in a way that will be both truthful and satisfactory, or that will show the money value of the educational plant we have here. For a solution we would have to go away back to colonial times for a part, and the answers are complicated in a great variety of ways.

Question 10. This refers to the special library in the school. This department shares in all the use and facilities of the university library, hence there is no attempt to make a large collection of books of our own; most of our books are to supplement those in the main library, or else those needed in the laboratories, cr for handy reference.

Yours, truly,

WM. H. BREWER.

TABLE D.-Number of students and duration of civil engineering course.

1

Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

14 Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College

20 John C. Green School of Science

Cornell University.

Case School of Applied Science.
Towne Scientific School.

26 Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College. Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College

II.

COURSE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.

The instrument of the civil engineer is the transit and his sphere of practice the open country, but the instrument of the mechanical engineer is the hammer and his place is in the shop. The Roman roads and aqueducts are standing evidences of the skill of the Roman people, the pyramids and Lake Moeris testify to the ability of the Egyptian engineer, and the cathedrals of France to that of the master masons of the Middle Ages, but an "industrial revolution" waited for the invention of a steam engine that was something more than a curiosity or a toy. This industrial revolution may be said to have reached its majority, so to speak, about the middle of the present century, at least in England, where from peculiar circumstances it found a congenial soil. Progress in industry, however, must not be confounded with progress in that kind of industrial education which is given in schools. Neither the Greek literary and artistic genius nor the English industrial and political genius was born within the walls of an educational edifice. But when a nation has manifested its genius it is possible and desira. ble to have persons study the manifestations of that genius, formulate and teach the results, and thus mechanically a naturally less gifted or enterprising nation is elevated to a stage of culture in which the less gifted nation may reap the same intellectual or material benefits the more gifted enjoy.

In 1855, at the time of the reorganization of the Rensselaer Institute, a department of "Mechanics, Machines, and Constructions" was established in the school, with a set of text-books printed mostly in Paris and London, and in two cases in Germany, but there was no course leading to a degree in mechanical engineering, the instruction in that art being a part of the course in civil and mining engineering. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1864 there was in the fourth year a course of mechanical engineering separate from the civil engineering course after the close of the third year. At the School of Mines of Columbia College, New York City, a course of machines which is essential in a course of mining engineering' was given, about 1861, during the third year. The first practical schools of mechanical engineering were the Worcester Institute and the Stevens Institute of Technology, though it may be objected to them that they are schools for making master workmen rather than engineers. Nevertheless, as the practical work of the course of mechanical engineering is what distinguishes the institutions in which it obtains from all other educational institutions, it is well to begin with a consideration of it.

66

At the Worcester Institute the regular course of instruction is prefaced by an "apprentice half year," in which the four studies that the average student of mechanical engineering has been found to be deficient in are followed from January to June. These studies are English and French literature (6 hours a week), free-hand drawing (6 hours a week), and shop practice in woodwork and moulding (36 hours a week). Then during the three years of the course 10 hours a week are devoted to practice, which in the second term of the last year includes machine design.

66

In this shop practice two principles are observed: First, that while labor with hand tools and machines should be wisely blended, yet since machinery has a constantly increasing share in the conversion of material into useful forms, the educated mechanic should know how to design, construct, and assemble the parts of a machine as well as how to make its product; and, second, that excellence in construction is to be sought as a most valuable factor in instruction. The power of the engineer, says the faculty, to decide upon general grounds the best form and material for a machine and to calculate its parts is greatly increased by blending with it the skill of the craftsman in manipulating the material, and the fact that the product is to be tested and used kindles interest in its manufacture and furnishes additional incentive to thoroughness and exactness. After the earliest lessons the practice is on commercial goods and follows the best methods of commercial production. Thus, while the institute offers a good education, based on mathematics, the living languages, physical sciences, and drawing, and sufficient familiarity with some branch of applied science to secure to its graduates a livelihood, its two peculiar features are: (1) that in addition to the general course of study and to the regular work of all students in the laboratories each student devotes at least ten hours weekly to practice in the department he has chosen; and (2) that the practice of the students in the department of mechanical engineering is in well-equipped shops in which a manufacturing business is carried on. Construction accompanies instruction at every step.

The printed page is not adapted to describing the technicalities of a machine shop and even photo illustrations are more useful as evidences of the equipment of the school than of the value of its work to the future engineer. It will, then, suffice to say that in the third year of the Worcester Institute the students build one or more machines from their drawings, which, though made from definite specifications, are intended to afford ample field for the personal responsibility and originality of each student in making correct design and arrangement of parts of the machine in hand. While the work is not copying, it must not depart essentially from the best practice among manufacturing mechanics. Thus one class has constructed a 25 horse-power Corliss engine, another a 10 horse-power upright reversible engine, another a 40 horse-power Buckeye engine. The class of 1885 constructed an engine lathe 18 feet in length: the class of 1886 a Hendey shaper, etc.

The Stevens Institute is, as its catalogue claims, a school of mechanical engineering." There are departments of physics and of chemistry, and applied electricity is taught, but the object of the school is to provide a systematic course in the theory of machine construction and a study of existing systems. Mathematics, pure and applied, mechanical drawing, shop practice and experimental mechanics, experimental physics, and chemical analysis, all are more or less powerful auxiliaries to the object of the systematic course in the theory of machine construction and the study of existing systems. But as we are now particularly concerned with the shop work, it is necessary to keep to that.

The work-shop course of the institute is intended to supply the student with a knowledge, as complete as possible, of the best existing methods and processes necessary to the construction of such mechanical designs as the theoretic part of the course will enable him to originate. But dependence is not entirely placed on the necessarily elementary and limited instruction that can be given in the machine, blacksmith, and carpenter shops, and the iron and brass foundry; but, after differences in machines, tools, and methods of manipulation are comprehended by the student, he is taken to establishments where real work is being carried on. The usual tour of the senior class is as follows:

April 1.-Bethlehem. Eagle Hotel. Steel and zinc manufacture. Bethlehem Iron and Zinc Works.

April 2.-Philadelphia. Girard House.

(1) Welding, fitting, and testing of wrought-iron pipe. Morris & Tasker's Pascal Iron Works.

(2) Arrangement and outfit of first-class machine shops. Seller's Machine Works.

(3) Locomotive manufacture. Baldwin Locomotive Works.

(4) Marine engines and shipbuilding. Cramp Ship Yard.

April 5.-Hartford. Allyn House.

(1) Machine tools, taps and dies, and standard gauges; gear-cutting by machinery, and drop forgings. Pratt & Whitney Company.

(2) Improvements in automatic screw machinery; recovery of oil from metal cuttings; straightening of bar iron. Hartford Screw Company.

(3) Machinery for manufacture of repeating rifles; manipulation of Gatling gun; construction of disc and Baxter engines; automatic wood-screw machinery; latest attempt at setting type by machinery. Colt's Armory.

(4) Latest methods of heating and ventilation. Hartford statehouse.

(5) Extreme case of use of fast-speed engines for large steam-power plant. Willimantic Linen Mill.

April 6.-Springfield. Massasoit House.

(1) Construction and use of turbine water wheels. Holyoke Machine Works. (2) Testing of turbines. Holyoke Testing Flume:

(3) Manufacture of paper. Dickinson Paper Mills.

April 7.-Boston. United States Hotel.

(1) Most improved machinery for rapid working of brass. Hancock Inspirator Company's shops.

(2) Testing of large sizes of materials. Emery testing machine. Watertown Arsenal.

(3) Types of modern pumping engines. Leavitt walking-beam and fly-wheel type and Worthington direct-acting type. Boston sewage-pumping station, Dor

chester.

April 8.-Providence. Narragansett House.

(1) Manufacture of machines in duplicate by most improved machine processes. Wilcox & Gibbs's sewing machine, machine molding, pickling and annealing of cast iron for milling machine work. Brown & Sharp Manufacturing Company. (2) Supply water to cities and towns; direct distribution. Hope street station. Corliss (5) cylinder direct engine and Nagle geared form of engines. Reservoir