Excerpt from Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Vol. 52: With Other Selected and Abstracted Papers; Session 1877-78 Part II These few general remarks will show how largely the engineer has been employed, and how much his labours have contributed to the development of the wealth and prosperity of every country in which they have been carried on. I will now proceed to matters of more personal interest to each member of the Institution. There is considerable individuality in the practice of most Of our members. Circumstances to a great extent control our opera tions. Early engagements or opportunities do much towards fixing a man's future career. Some men have been principally engaged in the construction of railways, others in hydraulic engineering, many in mechanical construction. Some have devoted their energies to the development of the electric telegraph others to gas -li ghting, to armour-plating, to naval architecture, or to artillery; while not a few may be considered as purely scientific men, investigating the strength of materials, the laws of motion, the phenomena of light and heat, and the thousand other questions which have a bearing on practical engineering. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.