student acquires facility in the uses of tools and machinery in the making of some of the simpler elements of a machine or the parts of a useful product. At a later period these parts are assembled and the machine is completed, being subjected to severe tests as to the harmony and adaptation of its various parts. In this process the standard of excellence is never lower than that of the best manufacturing establishments. The commercial value of these products is kept out of sight in planning the practice of the student, whatever is best adapted to the successful development of skill being utilized. But constructive power is of a higher order than that of skill in handicraft and is of relatively greater value to the mechanical engineer. For this reason it is believed to be important to cultivate this power by shaping the practice work of each student so that it shall lead, before the course is finished, to the completion of a variety of mechanical products, of themselves of real commercial value. The school shops are purely educational in their character and the rapid progress which is made in them is largely due to the fact that students come to their shopwork with the perceptive faculties, the reason, the judgment, and the taste all under constant and careful training in other departments of the school. In a general way the plan of instruction in all of the departments of the institute is in accord with that indicated above, the central idea of which is that nothing is lost but much is gained by an intimate intermingling of theory and practice. The knowledge acquired through the use of the text book, the recitation, the lecture, and the library becomes in a much greater degree the personal property of the student by being submitted to the test of the workshop, the laboratory, and the field. The material appliances for instruction in other departments is also commensurate with those of the school shop. The department of civil engineering possesses a variety of the best instruments for field and office work. The drawing department occupies several large rooms, which are provided with examples of the most approved methods of drawing; perspective models, made at the Royal Sculpture Gallery at Dresden; a collection of casts of antique forms, made by Malpieri, of Rome; and a full set of models designed by Walter Smith, of Boston. The mechanical drawing room is supplied from the shop with examples of machine construction, and it also contains specimens of the drawing and machine work done at other polytechnic schools, notably a large collection presented to this institution by the Imperial Institute of Technology at St. Petersburg. The chemical laboratory occupies a separate building, and is well equipped for qualitative and quantitative analysis, assaying, and determinative mineralogy. The physical laboratory occupies eight rooms and is well furnished with the best modern apparatus, including instruments of precision in all of the departments of physics. Especial attention is given to electricity, and the laboratory is provided with dynamos, motors, and some of the best types of measuring instruments. In connection with the workshops, this laboratory furnishes unusual facilities for those who desire to fit themselves for the intelligent manufacture of electrical instruments and machinery, or for the management of the same. The course in mathematics includes those branches of the subject which are necessary to a full understanding of the higher departments of physics and mechanics, both theoretical and applied. Especial attention has been given to the application of mathematical principles in this as well as in other departments. In language all students are required to study English, German, and French. What is known as the "laboratory method" is largely used in language instruction, and especial attention is given to the reading and translating of various French and German technical journals. Work in language is distributed through the last three years of the course, at the end of which students have a good working knowledge of German and French, and in English they have studied with considerable care several of the best specimens of composition. As a means of further culture in this direction each of the classes meets once a month for a "journal review," at which two or more members of the class present reviews of the current numbers of the numerous technical and scientific journals found in the reading room. LIBRARY. Although of very recent formation the library already contains a collection of 5,000 volumes, which have been carefully selected as directly relating to the technical and scientific work of the institute. It includes complete sets of many of the most important journals, transactions of societies, domestic and foreign, a complete set of the drawings and specifications of the United States Patent Office, Journal of Telegraph Engineers, etc., and is at all times accessible to the students. A reading room is provided in which will be found more than forty of the leading scientific and technical journals in English, French, and German. COURSE OF STUDY. The following is a brief outline of the course of study, showing the number of hours per week given to each subject. This outline covers all of the courses, the differences growing out of the manner in which the hours under the head of "Practice" are spent. Thus, for those who give their attention exclusively to mechanical engineering, the practice hours are spent in the school shops; the students in civil engineering devote the practice hours after the Freshman year to special work in that department in the field or in recitation and lecture room. The |