QK THE MCEiSiSITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARTS FOR THE DOMINION :.'-^*«-ry A paper read before the Caimdian Society of Civil Engineers at their meeting of the asth M a y ^87 /^ >^ Duriii'4 a profession. il career of now nearly 40 year*, I have had to «le.siirn, estimate and superintend ihe construction of very many biiildiiig-i nf all kinds, smjill and lar.;e : dwelling houses, chiirL-hes and presltytt'iies. ihe Lavul University, collt-ges, convent*, asylums, hospitals, hotels, si;h(w>l«;, theates, man u factories, &c. ; and engaged as I hive b^en on hundreds of arbitration cases relating to defects of Construction, in vmiIous suuctuve*, or in the settlement of untold accounts for extras arising out of faults of omissiou and comniLssiun on part of architects and so called engiueers and others ; have had abundant ojiportunity to notice the great and un|>ardonable ignorance dis- played in scores of instances, of the simplest rules of tie constructive art. A paper of this nature would no iloubt be more apropos if. read before and to be discussed by a society of architects in lieu of one of the engineering profession ; but no definite line can well be drawn tetween the two, and much of what I have to say may be consider* d common property ; fov, while the architect ofceu has to be something of an engineer when dealing with foundations built in water; the engineer must also often trench upon the domain of th3 architect in the erec- tion of t iges and viaducts and in such architectural structures as manufactories and mills, ))ump and engine houses for water works and other purposes, light houses, grain and other elevators, stores for dockage purposes, railway station buildings and the like. Hencp nq apology, I presume, need be offered for my dealing with this subject in presence of an a:semblagri of men who, like the nifmbers of the association of Civil Engineers of Canada, must be often called on to aesign and erect structures where not only have they to beac|uainted with the ordinary and essential rules of construction, but in many cases also of distributive and orna-* mental architecture ; and [ ho|)e only to say enough to persuade our legislators of the federal and local parliaments of the absolute necessity, at this stage of the growth and progress of Canada, of the creation of one or more schools of art akin to those of Kensington in London, or to those of St. Cvr, Aix and Angers.in France ; where the rising generation of engineers and architects may study and muke themselves acquainted with all that is essential to an intelligent appreciation of the necessity of being guided in ct»nslructions of all sorts by the well known rules which should be followed out to prevent disaster and the waste of public money, as of private fortunes, in the construction of works which are either totaly unsuited to the ptirposes intended, as is the case with the new harbour works at Quebec, or where the cost incurred has to be incurred again to rectify errors of an engineer- ing or architectural natiire. The Levis graving is dock a case in point, where from not having had the precaution to bore and ascertain the true nature of the foundation on which the structure was to rest, the caisson gate has had to be moved inland by not less than 65 ft., the dock curtailed by that much in its length ; and, due to which error, a work undertaken to be buili and completed for less than half a million of dollars, now costs close upon double the amount ; a single dam, for mere temporary purposes arising out of the unpardonable error of the english engineers employed by the harbour commissioners to design and carry out the work, having cost not less than 8118,000.00. Is there anything more usual for insttvnce, with a large number of our would be architects and builders than to be totally ignorant of the fact that the strength of a joist or horizontally placed beam is in direct ratio to the square of its depth and indirectly or in the inverse ratio of its length. Do they even know the meaning of these terms ; or would they not in so many thousands of existing cases, instead of adding to the breadth or thickness of the beam (because it re(|uires no tuition to understand that) have, in lieu cf so doing, increased its depth by only a fraction of the whole ; for, while to double the strength of the beam, its depth remaining the same, the breadth must be doubled, the same increment of resistance is added to it by increasing its depth by only 4 tenths thereof or little more than a thiixi of its vertical height. To treble tiie strength, the advantage gained is even more marked ; as in such case it sulUces to add, not the double of 4 tenths but little over 7 tenths — 73 per cent ; and to quadruple the strength, tlie depth only has to be doubled, so that a 3"x 17" joist for instance is as strong as cae of G"x \'l" or as two of 3" x 12" •while the increased quantity of timber is but 40 per cent in the one case against 100 f in the other; and a 3"x 15" joist, while only 25 ^2° niore in its cubic contents or board measure, will be 50 }° stronger than the 3" X 12" timter. > . »;- Had this rule been acted on iu the past, how niatiy thousands of dollars worth of timber would there not have been saved in the aggregate and each and every one have benefited thereby. Of course there is a practical limit to thus adding to the height of beam to increase the strength ; as, in the case of timber, the deeper beam must be cut from a larger and more expensive log, and if very deep, herring bone bridging must be employed or intermediate strutting, to preserve the verticality of the beam and ensure its not giving laterally. The depth of floors must not be iude- finitely increased, the height between floors diminished by so much, or the total elevation of the structure added to in a manner to make it more costly or 6i ung.iinly aspect. Again, how often have I not been shocked, on entering even new or comparatively new buildin<;s: dwelling houses by the hundred, stores and factories, and even i.ublic Imilditigs ; wht-re all the tloors *were on ihe slant towards ihe centre of the building ; all the doors, more especially in paiiitions running from froat to renT — less so in th« narrower direction ^et wen the gabii- ends or perty wnlis,— on the skew ; partly fioni bring forced out of the n ctaiigulav, partly IV'-m having to be ( astd off by the joiner from time to time, to cause them to shut and fit their jambs or frames ; the furniture of cuurse following siMt, with t;ibles on which a round ruler or pencil tould not be placed witliout rolling off; the [plastering ctai kid and broken from ihe settlement, and the whole defect rendered doi biy sensible and more intolerable to the eye by its l)eing ibrust on the specta- ator in the evidently inclined lines to which the pai^rings or tapestiy were cut to conform to the unhorizonial lines of cornic-is and skirtings. , The fiist, the extra cost of I»eams is a defect only of a pecnniary nature so to say and being hidden bencitth ihe floors is soon and easily forgotten ; but not so this, which to a sen-itive ami appreciative eye can not but be a lasting and continuous source of bsxlily iuiiouvenieuce and mental tigony. . ' . "r ^^':^-:'^ And all this due to what ? to sheer ignorance of the fact thit of ih'ee points of support, the centre one bears double the weight of en her of the others when [»laced half w.iy betw'een the^n. Now not only are the division walls of thousands of buildin<2;-i, not stronger in proportion to ihe outer walls, as they should be ; but they are on the ccmtrary not half so thit;k ov strong, and worse thnn all, what do we find in most tenemetit house*, b it a mete partition of light wooden studs and lath ;tn(i plaster with sometimes not even a f mndation wall in or telow the basement floor fi;r this paitition to resi on, or if there be one the chances are that it is not «ven on an unyielding fiunda- tion ; and thus, between the sinking into the soil, the crushing of the superposed horizontal timbers between the tiers of studs, due to weight of structure and U) shrinkiige from drying or ilesiccation, amounting to as much as an inch or niore in each story ; the settlprnptit occurs which I have all id- ed to, and either hundreds or thousands have to be expended in rectifying this error of c iuslruction often due to the parsimoniousness and ignorance of the proprietor himself, and in total disregard for the advice of his architect or builder; or the structure remains a crying disgrace and reproach to all concerned in its erection and a source of every diiy discoinfurt and loiment, as every thiu^ uu- aesthetical generally is to all people of fine and cultivated feelings. :,:.: ■ ^ ' But there has also to be guarded against the sagging of a floor between the two or four walls ; and to this purjiose it often suliices to remember that every joist, as far as possible, or at Last every second or alternate one should stretch right through the structure from front to rear and so rest on all three the walls, the ceu.rc one as weil as the two outer ; that is, on three pjiuts of support. The strength of a joist is thus doubled and its tendency to sag at the centre of the vacant space reduced by 50 per cent ; its stift'ness, as already said, being in the inverse ratio of its length; nor must it be forgotten tiiat when no more thant two points of supjiort can be bad, or the beam not long enough to reach the full depth, then may its rigidity l>e increased 25 "j^ by thoroughly sealing it iit one end in the wall and by not less than 5b °i^ when similarly sealed at b"tli ends ; not for- getting neither, that whatever weight the beam will bear at its centre, it will bear twice the weight when uniformly distributed throughout its length. , . • * . My advice, is Gentlemen : design the thing as it should be, and so specify the work ; and let the paper writing there renifiin, as weil the plans and sections, to show and prove that you proposed what you consideied right and essential ; anti then leave it to the proprietor, if so he should elect, to cut and curttvil as he may please, to thin out the walls for sake of false economy, shorten the joists or reduce their height. I have had examples of this more than once in ray own practice. When not much more than a boy, just out of indentures, I was called on to design the plans for the parish church of Beaujjort, near Quebec. Each of the towers I planned to luive 4 Wtills : in fact to make towers of them from below to the base of the spire, ihe steeples rei'-chii>g as they do to a heighl of over 200 ft. The church wardens in their economical wisdom decided on leaving out the two inner walls of each of the towers, and supporting the corr-jsponding sides of the spires on a single angle pillar or rather post of tiuiber. The consequence is that Ivtth the steeples settled towards each other and towards the build- ing and that being thereafter called on by a then new curate and new set of wardens to rectify the eri'or ; I was reproached with not having at the outset properly designed the structuie, until the very plans 1 had prepared some 20 years before were produced by me to show that not 1 was at fault, but the parishioners themselves in the \yrong. Nothing is more difficult for instance tlum to get a proprietor or even a municipality repre- sented in its City council by illiterate men, to allow an engineer or archited; to build a retaining wall ofenthvient strength, sutticiently thick at bottom to hold out as it ehould do for its natural life against the horizontal thrust and overturning tendency of the material behind it, often so liquid, so fluid Tshould eay, when conjiosed of (piick sand or of water diluted earth, as to have to be asai- mikted in stress to that of water pressure for purpost» of calculation. I have not nhvayd been faultness myself in this resj>ect, wishing to economise tlie straight- ened mi-aiis of such a poverty stricken place as ol I Quebec ; but have long found out that it is ail false ecumauy and that far better be it to design and build any such wall of a greater rather than a less ihi-kuess, tliHn be taunted wilh and ihereafttr made to feel keenly the justness of the reproach ol not having done so and see the structure giving way little by little towards the open, lirat gradually ioosmg its batter, if any, reaching the vertical and then in course of time leaning forwai-d and tiiially in from lU to 2U years threaieuing detstruction, when its natural life should have been at least a hundred years or more if kept in proper repair. But retaining walls will do this, due to others cauoes to be guarded agiinst and uu matter huw thick they b ■ and well adapted to sustain and resist the thrust : 1 nieaii i'roui the ettects of Irost when not filled in in the rear with permeable material, as they should invaiiably be, lo allow surface or other wattia to pass off through weepers below to the street level. ■ • There are other defects to be guuided ag dnst, as the bulging out of walls i>f certain structures, by the stress of vaults and arches wjieic not c >iin;erai;ted either by a proper thi jkness of wall or by the stieuglhening thereof by buttrtdae>, or loudmg fiMin above by adding to the height, or applying iron ties to counteract the spreading tendency ; to any n-ie to the end as barely to leave more between it und tli ; angie lluin the lueie thickness of the WuA itself, a defect which should not be tolerated, but the door thilud fartlur from iho end eveii at the expense of widening the passage, trenching on thy room adjoining or thrs less objyctioniible mode of encroaching a little on the front portion of the r..oin and lading the defect from the insiue by an angular or quadrantal projection wiihin the apartmenL. Gentlemen, there is in our human nature an clement of aestheticisin. Certain proportions jjeain to be innate in our minds, an. I existing there, irrespective of any tuiiion of the beautiful, they are so to say engraven on the retina of the eye and lb us rendered indissoluble. Likely this is due to the ratios in ihe human sature. You can nolice this when ever an illiterate man or child will say that such and such a thing does not pL-ase him, as for instance when a building is top heavy: that it looks like a man whose. head rests almost on his shoulders Without the interposition of a neck. . ,. We all appreciate the true proi.ortir)ns of a human being, mfin or child or woman. One is said to be too bulky for his height, too short, too stumpy, another too tall and slight. We do not like, we can not bear to see a waist half way uowu the body, of which th ; normal height is at say two thirds, from the ground or floor We stand on. .,-.'- Our clue is taken from this, it; is implanted in us by the creator and hence it is I beleive that without kowiiig why, no one almost there is but who dislikes to see a column fov instance cut or divided through the centie, or its middle pointed at by an abuttuing cornice, or plinth course, or . by the hf ad or transom of a door or gate way or by the impost of an arched opening or by a nich v of which either the top or bottom comes opposite the centre. On the contrary if any such adjoining feature cuts tht, column or abuts againts it at just two thirds the height from base one feels satisfied that the right proportions are observed. Why are the fillets in the flutings of a column made just one third the height of shaft. Try them at -| the height and some how or other you will not feel satisfied. Put two such columns side by side, one of which the flutes are filled in to half, the other to one third the height aud even the untutored eye will select the latter. Have you ever seen a spire where if the height of angle minarets do vary by less than the two thirds from the total height of structure, it is pleasing to the eye. No, the pinnacle must be one third the height of steeple or thereabout and any attempt to alter it materially is destructive of the eftect. In this way also or due to the same sense, the same innate aestheticism of our human nature, can we account I beleive for the fact that a basement floor should be, some two thirds of the joint height of the two stories over it and an attic story two thirds only of the story which it crowns ; the attic window also, I do not here allude of course to the dormer nr so called attic window in a i'ooi so much as to what u called in classic architecture an attic, that is the upper portion or story of the front elevation of a building ; I say an attic window also or that in a regular attic story is looked for as having to be not one half or one third the height of the windows in the regular . stories below it ; but almost invariably some two thirds thereof to be unoffending, agreeable to the eye. * A door must also be in some way proportionate to the human frame when properly attired, as of a woman with her skirts, say in height from two aud a half to three times its width and never its width anything like e4ual to its height. • r. . ;; - ? ' A room is not satisfactory, it will please no one, not even those who are incapable of knowing why or of giving expression to their dislike unless its length does bear a certain proportion to its breadth as th.it of o to 2 for instance and ihe height must bear about the same ratio to the breadth to be agreeable, as 10 to 12 ft. for a lo ft. room, 20 ft. for a 30 ft. room and so on in profiortiou. _ 4 — We have a sad example of this want of relationship in our no-w parliament hnililings Q'lehpc where the rooms on either side the corridor are bnt 1") ft. in depth from front to rear, so that the windows bein<4 say at 10 ft. centres and when three or more of them are thrown into one aan- uieut or to speak more coirectly, the apartment made to include that many openings, th'is makiiifr the room some 30 to 40 ft. or more in length, which it must needs be lor many pur()0se.-<, among others for the architects and engineers departments and crown lands wher(^ lengthly space is reiniired for dranght^nieni' tables, and the extension of large sized maps, the room becomes a mere gut ; whi'i'cHS, had the depih of b'iiding been Mxed at fJO ft. instead of 50 which it shniM liiive been; then could the rooui-^, on either side a 10 ft. corridor, hive I'een awarded a breadth of 20 ft. each instead of 15, the remuii in;^ 10 ft. being ample for outer an I inner Vi'.iUs. Gentlemen it is, bt^lieve me, in lio spirit of f lult finding thsit I .illnde to these defec's of con-i- truction, (listribi tion, (li-comtion ; but it V)tho\vs ns to ediicati' onr youth up to a true iiuoih iic sentiment, a true iipiiivciation of \vh:it is proper; and in th ■ suine w:\y as I am n >w puihtiiig one defects in buildings tine to oihers than myself, so W(iuld I at all times b« ready to admit ihe co;- rectness of any such critii ism where I have been concerned. ;.;;,- '• Our new post-office is by general consent deemed toj -heavy ; th it is, there is too much masonry, too great a height of wall aBove the undtdly shortened windows of the attic story; and the contrar}' defect obtains to some extent in our new court h:)use where there is too little luisonry ia piopoition to the nuinlier ami size of openings which hr»d they all b:*en curtailed by just on-- f jot i.i heii;ht, Would have restoited the desired ratio " le rapport eiitre les jileius et les vides " as ihey say in French, and may be the mezzanine openings under tjie root h id tietter h ive b -en omitted or if necessary for lighi and veniilati(ju, hidden or agiiu as the more characteristic frcnch expression has it " dissiiiiules " behind some ornamental iron scroll work in iuutatiou of the scidptured frieze of an entablature. If I alli;de on^y to buildings in Quebec and do not reach to Montreal or elsewhere for ccrapiirison, it is not that there m.iy not be structures in Montreal or other Canadian or American cities where something may be found to criticise as for instance in the proportions both outwaid and inward of your Notie -Dame Cathedral or of the stumpy sti ucture adjoining the beautif jI grecian portico of the Aiuntrial Bank ; but because 1 have not the buildings as I have those of t^uebec in my minds eye, and I think gentleiuen, no belter paper could be written by any one of you, none invited or solicited fiom your city arcliitectsof more realistic value to the youth of your city than a paper like this, written in a proper spirit and without any des:re of fault finding but meely to educate public opinion to a sense of the aesthetic in architecture as in engineering, by pointing out and discussing before your members and the public who may b.i fortunate enough to atten 1 your sittings, the salient traits of your city architecture both public and domestic, its lu.iny beauties an I to be eulogised and copied ; its fewer or more unumerous, as the case my be, defects to be avoided. What would Mansard say if it were given to him to be witness to the many erroneous interpretations of what constitutes the proper proportions of a so called Mansard roof, and in dome construction why depart so widely from the beautiful proportions of the Invalides at Paris. I will not say with Rory O'Moor 'hat there is luck in odd numbers, though I do not at all pretend to deny the fact; but there seems to be some justification for them even in the Scriptures where periods and epochs whether of weal or wore, famine or abundance ai-e never found in multiples of two Itut where the odd unit invariably stei)s in to destroy the monotony, i,nd genileinen as well in breadth or horizontal magnitude must these proportions be observed as in the vertical. Try it and vary it as you will, but the tower or the steeple must make some approach towards the one third rule laid down of breadth of portal. Alake it much broader and it will not suit, nor can it be much narrower, and in ihe same way as the bveadth of spire must conform to that of the church faijade, so must the projecting or recessed central i)orlion of any front elevation of a building, that is, fronting towards a sti-eet or oven on an inner court, hold some relatiouahi j, some near approach to this same ratio of 1 and 2 to 3. The odd unit is essential in almost every case. Do we not always have an opening, door or window, gateway or the like exactly on the central axis of a building ^ does it not come natural to do so in all cases, and even in a bridge or viaduct, dc we not alwtiys seek if possible to have a central span instead of a pier right in the middle of a river or a thoroughfore. There are defects of spac^ which may be remedied by optical illusion. If a facade be neces- sarily too low, avoid the too oft repeated horizontal lines of pi ejecting cornices and belt courses, but rather do the contrary and throw it into vertical lines which have the ettect of adding mate- rially to the height. The vertical Hutiugs of a column have this ettect where any honzoutai divi- sion of the bhafi, any spirally twined ornament around it has the contrary ettect. Nor must we forget to observe the nature! in all we do. Not only must a post or column be stout and strong enough to support a structure, but it must appear to be. So when the material for instance is iron, it should be known to be such and painted in a way to show what it is, instead of bein" niade to look like wootl or stone and thus create anxiety and doubt as to the fitness of it« size, and hov/ often do we not see this elementary rule of ethics outraged by dissiiuulating ihe true material under a coat of imitation stone or marble, where such material reduced to so narrow a basis would be obviously inadequate to sustain the weight or even to be self supj.K)itiug when so re- duced in breadth. Gentlt'mon, we want a school of arts or more than one where our youth may be educated to the necessity of all these observances and the thousands of dollars lavished In m;iking good the defects of constructioii I hive allu led to would ere this have paid fot and niaintuned many such institutions on a jierinanent and continuous fuoting. As to the sanitary element, made up of drainage, light, ventilarion and heating, we are now j)retty well off for Canadian and oiher periodicals dealing with the subjtji, and I would merely rumark on one of these heads : s liting the temperature to the requirements of the outer air, that I do not see why some mode should not be devised to add to our coriifoit by cooling thi inner air in summer in addition to heating it in during cold weather. For, in the same may that the colder outer air is heated on its way to the interior of a building by being parsed over healed pipt'S ; in ji siiui-hir manner could this outer air, wlvu too warm to suit the human sy&teru, be cooled down by ])as.siug it over the same pipes then filled with iced water instead of hut, or diie -tiy over a bed or stratuui of ice ; and how eltieient this would proove, is evidenced by the fact which ni.iuy may h ive often no"iee 1 as [ hive myself, th it when on a warm day a breeze or current of air reaches one in the open after passing over the ordinary ice cart when uncovered as we have them in Quebec, the decreuse in temjiciuture or coolness of the breeae is thus most marked and ugreubie. • -■; And in other ways^can the air be cooled as it always is in stiramer during rainy weather or even during the merest shower, by following the same ]iroce&s, imitating nature in an artificial sprinkling kej't up during the hotter hours of the day, or better siill when it can be afforded, by ariiticial rain around the house or opposite a door or windi-w (one or more) by conducting a pi|>e under stithcient j'ressure to rise to roof level, so i hat, jx^rfovated along its length like the sprinkler of a watering cart, it may distribute its contents over so much of the eaves as to suit the purposed requirc;d. As to fire proofing I would werely remark that the subject is most pertinent and it is satisfactory to see that a very free use is beginning to h'. made of iron joists and concrete floors ; nor can we reasonably hope for much more than thi.'*, with brick partitions instead of wood and lath and plaster ones, as no one will ever co:jsent to dwell or even pass his office hours within a building entirely of stone and brick and iron; no one will put up with any such permanent and continuous discomfort for the sake of an eventuality which may never occur or so seMoin as not to warrant the expense of iron floors and stairs and doois and window sashes and their trimmings thus surrounding one with their chiding influences. - - ' • May be the most portentous question of all, now a days, is that of the possibility of escape from a building in case of fire, but I shall not allude to it at present as I am about to read a paper on the subject at the next sitting of the Royal Society of JCanada of which I am a member and as such bound to contribute my quota towards the Society's yearly volume of transactions. This paper I shall thereafter have much pleasure in repeating the lecture of before the Canadian Society of Engineers and Architects and only hope yon may abet me, one and all, in my endeavour to have the Legislature step in and enforce the erection of fire proof buildings for hotels and theatres, colleges, asyluins, manufactories and the like; that is to the extent I have alluded to of iron joists and concrete filling in between them with brick partition walls and some thoroughly practical and efficient mode of escape in case of fire, a social and humanitarian proposition of tlie first importance. Gentlemen at this stage in our country's grow^th and progress, we do not want to go abroad for hints or help. We are now so old as to be self sufficient in the building line et least. Montreal, and I am proud to proclaim it thus publicly, can now manufacture almost anything from- a needle to an anchor as the saying is. The several cities and towns of the Dominion have their en- gineers and architects equal to all and every emergency, and if any one city has not its due proportion of capacity in this respect, it can get it from a sister town of the Dominion or from our kind neigh- bours of the American Union and not have to cross an ocean for the puri)0se. Even at the time we built the Victoria, our Keefers and other engineers were totaly adequate to the task, but of course euglish capitalists were concerned and some o';e had to be sent out from England for the purpose. Let me hope however gentlemen that there will now be an end to all this kind of thing. America has outstripped Europe in very many things, quite long ago, and to proof: the 800 ft. span railway bridge across the Niagara river, the more stupendous bridge of not less than IGOO ft. span between New- York and Brooklyn, our railroads counting their miles by thousands, with the many wide spanned cantilever bridges reaching from cliff to cliff over rivers and ravines innumerable and of untold depth. Need I in thia respect allude to aught else than our inland system of water communication. It is not merely equal but superior to any thing in the old world. , Our Canadian engineers have not been slow to frame their minds, their conceptions and their works on the same vast scale on which our inland waters were presented to them. European engineering nas been dwarfed so to say, on kept down in scale by not having the opportunities we have here of dealing with a mighty river like St- Lawrence. It is a true saying that occasion makes the man and gentlemen I proclaim it loudly and most feerle.ssly of contradiction : had our Keefers orourShanly?', our Flemings, Lights, our Kennedys, our Schreibers, Pages, I'erly's, and the like, been consulted or called in to pronounce upon the respec- tive mprits of the ]>lans submittpd for our Quebec Haibour wnrk-s, or any one of tht'in ein|ilr>y?d to design and sujieiiiitend the construction of the work'', we would not now have \h: total fiilure which we must chronicle to dny : a so calleil (iock, a tidal and an inner or a wet dock, wh"re, aftxT pxpt-nding millions, one of our ocean stenuiers will not darn to enter from sheer want of ien^'ih .and breadth iind depth enongh to move nbont in ; with no facilities for d«ei>ening, unless as ^[. IVrly says, beginingat some 40 ft distance from iht! suroimding walls; no luck as there necessirily >ho ild ha/e been to | rovide f^r entrance and exit nt nny stage of tide or even to make good the diHerenci! of several feet between two successive tides ; thus, may be, keeping a steamer othuiwise ready for its ocean voyage, waiting several days for the tide to rise sutfloiently to let it out; or having to fall baikonihe oiher alternative of letting out the water from the dock until its levid is reduceil ti» that of the tidal dock or rivcf, and thereby nuiy be grouding many of ihj deeper draught of vessel.-* inside of the enclosure. - ^ -?^-f -r y'r. Gentlemen, one and all of yon, let me ask you wh<'n yon visit onr poor misguided citv, let me ask yon to look tlowii at these so called harbor works from the height^i of nnr ramparts and I tell yon that your heart will bleed at the dire sight of th-', most profound stupidity that the worM has ever beeii witness to. There will you see oiitstreched before you the comparatively vast extent of the estuary or delta of the St. Ch tries, and there will you wonder in amnz'^m ;nt and ask yourselves why in common sense this long this costly jetty called the Louise enjbaiikm'nr was not shifted Northw.iid by many hundred feet thus affording water space within, more thin three* times the extent it is. You will see that had this been done, with the very same length and therefore no increased cost of jetty, a (juarter of a million dollars more would have sufficed to itroloiig th; then existing breakwater wharf to meet the jetty northward ; while now, not to treble the s|»ace as could then have been done, but only to add to it by an in-ignificant percentage, some lo to 20 per cent at thj most. M. Perly tell us that the cost of purchasing did private pro;>erty necjssary to ihat eml, over three quarters of a million of dollars, togeth.-r with a million more fur a dock wall on the southern sidj will not be less than 1^ to 2 million dollars instead of the quarter of a million alluded to. The shifting of the atone jetty so much further northward as it should have been, would have allowed of a series of some 4 to 5 cross wharves or piers tunning southward or at right angles to the jetty and which, not having to be water tight, could have been built at trifling a iditional expense and would thus have aftbrded berths for at least 12 to 20 additional vesst^ls of the largest size; while the dock as now constructed will hardly admit one of more than 22 ft. draught of water and on ihn condition thf.t when once in, it must back out to effect an exit. This is what we are subject to, gentlemen, by confiding such morks to outside would be engi- neers not capable of passing from the uirrow waters of the old country where every thing is on the same small scale, to the broader couceptious nesessary to enlarge their opyratious in the ratio of the wider waters of the newer world. . • . Not that there are -wanting English, French or other European engineers or American adequate to the task of designing works for Canada : as Stevenson of the Victoria, Brunei le of the Leviathan, Koebling of the suspension bridge, the engineers of the new Foith briilge in Scotland with its two mighty cantiliver spans of 1700 ft. each; but that our then harbour comissioners dit noc know where to look for them nor who to choose and they are the ones to blame, but recriminatiou is useless now that the thing is done. \ o It is then time I say again that we should have men educated here in full view of the difficulties of our climate and whose minds coul I mature schemes adequate to the scale of oi'.r vast inter-oceanic dominion. This can be done gentlemen first by a tuition in a school of art and design and next by their being indentured to a Canadian engineer of high standing in active and varied pratice like many of those wo have honored me this evening with their presence. / ' V ^: (Signed) C. BAILLAlKGfi, ■ ... i^' .■ ■ " ■-' -J^-"--'-' M. A., ./':■;;;. •-': .:^ , *■ -■ ■- ''i^- F.R.S. C. -- ■ City & Civil Engr., Arct. «&c, ^v Quebec, May 1887. ' • • ? .. . .