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Secretary read the communication received from Mr. Tredgold, which is thus entered in the Minutes :— Description of a Civil Engineer, By Thomas Thedgold, Hon. M. Inst. C.E. “ Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience of man; being that practical ap plication of the most important principles of natural philosophy which has, in a considerable degree, realized the anticipations of Bacon, and changed the aspect and state of affairs in the whole world. The most important object of Civil Engineering is to improve the means of pro duction and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade. It is applied in the construction and management of roads, bridges, rail roads, aqueducts, canals, river navigation, docks, and storehouses, for the convenience of internal intercourse and exchange, and in the con struction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters, and lighthouses; and in the navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce. “Besides these great objects of individual and national interest, it is applied to the protection of property where natural powers are the sources of injury, as by embankments for the defence of tracts of country from the encroachments of the sea, or the overflowing of rivers; it also directs the means of applying streams and rivers to use either as powers to work machines, or as supplies for the use of cities and towns, or for irrigation; as well as the means of removing noxious accumulations, as by the drainage of towns and districts to prevent the formation of malaria, and secure the public health. This is, however, only a brief sketch of the objects of Civil Engineering, the real extent to which it may be applied is limited only by the progress of science ; its scope and utility will be increased with every discovery in philosophy and its resources with every invention in mechanical or chemical art, since its bounds are unlimited, and equally so must be the researches of its professors. “The enterprizing Hollanders towards the close of the sixteenth century first separated Civil Engineering from architecture, under the title of hydraulic architecture; their example was followed in France towards the end of the seventeenth century, and soon afterwards was systematized in the great work of Belidor on Hydraulic Architecture. “ One of the great bases on which the practice of Civil Engineering is founded is the science of hydraulics: every kingdom, every province, every town has its wants, which call for more or less acquaintance with this science. Water, which is at once the most useful of the necessaries of life, and the most dangerous element in excess, when limited by the laws of this science is rendered the best of servants; the rolling cataract which spends its powers in idleness may be directed to drain the mine, to break the ore, or be employed in other works of labour for the use of man ; the streams are collected and confined in canals for inland traffic ; harbours are formed to still the raging of the waves of the ocean, and offer a safe retreat to the storm driven mariner; and ports are provided with docks, to receive the riches of the world in security: hence asose the term hydraulic architecture ; but it was too limited : the various appli cations of water had rendered the natural supplies inadequate to the wants of man, till he discovered that, combined with heat it formed a gaseous element endued with energies not less powerful than the falling cataract; its steam, confined and directed by science, became a new source of power, which in a few years altered and improved the condi tion of Britain, and we are every day witnessing new applications, as well as the extension of the older ones to every part of the globe.” Many of you will recognize some of the expressions of this descrip tion, which has, in fact, been abridged in our Charter; but I make no apology for giving it entire, believing that you will appreciate its com prehensiveness and its beauty. Eloquent and comprehensive as the words of Tredgold were, even his almost prophetic vision forty years ago did not take in the whole of that field of usefulness now open to us, and which ever grows wider by cultivation. The contributions of science have kept pace with the growing wants of the age. Metallurgy has worked out a revolution in the treatment and application of metals; chemistry has pointed to the purification and utilization of the sewage of towns, and the relieving rivers of pollution ; hydraulics have led to projects for supplying cities with water from remote mountains; electricity speeds the “winged word” in a girdle round about the earth, more quickly than fairy magic in the dreams of poets. If exact science has led the way, the members of this Institution have not been slow to follow with constructive science; our proceedings are rich with the records of works great in extent or interest, but some remain to be described. The Thames Embankment, the completion of the great Sewage Works and Outfalls, the Millwall Docks, various new or modified forms of Floating Docks, the Mont Cenis Railway, the successful submerging of the Atlantic Telegraph, the latest Iron Ships, the important works of the various Metropolitan Railways, and the Public Works which have been carried out in our Colonies; these and other undertakings recently completed, or in course of construction, will, it is to be hoped, become soon the subject of Papers and dis cussions. In illustration of what had been recently done in our Colonies, I may mention that Victoria, with an annual revenue of about £3,000,000, spends about £300,000 in Roads, Bridges, and other public works; Ceylon, with a revenue of about £1,000,000, spends about £230,000 ; Mauritius, with a revenue of about £650,000, spends about £70,000; and the Cape, with a revenue of about £860,000, spends about £50,000. In addition to these sums, and irrespective of the Cape Railway, execu ted by a company with a Colonial Guarantee on a fixed capital, the fol lowing sums have been raised and laid out within the last few years for the construction of Railways ; by Victoria £10,000,000, by Ceylon £1,750,000, and by Mauritius £1,430,000. These railways have been executed by the respective governments, without the intervention of companies; they have not been opened long enough to develop their traffic, but there is reason to believe that they will pay more than the interest on the money borrowed. It should be stated that of the sum set down as spent upon railways in Ceylon, only £800,000 was bor rowed, the remainder being produced by a tax on coffee and by ordi nary revenue. At a time when so much criticism is directed to the management and effects of Railway Enterprise, it should not bo forgotten how much of the present evil has arisen from unprofitable works forced on Companies by public opinion, and from the freedom with which Parliament has sanctioned competing lines. While we may deplore the individual losses which have arisen from these causes, and from over-speculation, we may recall, on the other hand, the great social and material benefits which railways have conferred on the country. Wisely or unwisely, upwards of four hundred millions have been expended upon our rail ways in about forty years. Irrespective of the saving of time and the vast increase of profitable commerce to which they have given rise, it has been estimated that the saving to the public in the cost of transport alone, by the use of Railways, as compared with that by other means of conveyance, if they had been equal to such an amount of traffic, would be measured by an interest of no less than 15 per cent, on this great outlay. The present depression of commercial enterprise may for a time check the progress of great Engineering operations, but perhaps it may give to corporate bodies a good opportunity for engaging the services of engineers in designing and carrying out many important sanitary works, and lead to the study of the numerous localities where low lands are now inadequately drained, and where the enlarged powers of the Land Drainage Act of 1861 may be successfully applied, or where superfluous supplies of water may be husbanded for irrigation and other purposes. While many railway companies are suffering from the effects of the unproductive outlay of capital on branch lines, it may be ■well to re member the special benefits which that outlay has conferred on the landowners and inhabitants of the country traversed, benefits which the people of many districts at present unserved by railways must be anxious to possess, but for which it is clear that the necessary capital cannot now be furnished by private enterprise. It would appear, then, to be a favourable time for reconsidering the principle of constructing local lines by means of rates to be levied on the districts which would be more directly benefitted by their construction. The Government of India have availed themselves of the present op portunity to select a certain number of Engineers in this country for the prosecution of irrigation and other public works, a field in which it is believed that many more Engineers may be employed w’ith great advantage to our possessions in the East. When Tredgold pointed out the application of Engineering “ to the protection of property where natural powers are the sources of injury,” he could hardly have forseen that in these days the attention of the Civil Engineer would have been directed to aid in constructions for defence from hostile attack, and even to the improvement of weapons of war. More than two thousand years ago, Archimedes, distinguished first in mathematical science, after carrying out the great work of the embankment of the Nile, devoted the last efforts of his genius to engi neering appliances, for the defence of Syracuse against Marcellus, and protracted the fall of his native city for three years. In our time, less directly and less prominently, but with marked success, the combined labours of engineers have been applied to national defence, by the in vention of improved systems of copying machinery for the perfect manufacture of small arms, by giving to machine tools the most minute accuracy, by the application of new and more powerful machinery to the production of fresh combinations and greater masses of metal and their reproduction as iron armour plates for land or sea defence, arid still further by the designing of great guns, and of new structures for ships of war. I need hardly refer you to the inaugural addresses of our past Presi dents, Mr. Bidder and Mr. Hawkshaw—to the papers contributed to this Institution, on Artillery, by Mr. Longridge, on National Defences, by Mr. G. Bidder, jun., on Iron-plated Ships, by Mr. Samuda, and on Ships of War, by Mr. Bourne, and to the valuable discussions on these Papers, in which so many distinguished officers, and so many able Engineers have taken part within these walls, as showing that these subjects are not foreign to our profession, and that the Institution and its members have contributed, in no small degree, to their investigation. If on such an occasion as the present I may have your indulgence for