ENGINEERING

(Fr. engine.) Strictly, the art of managing engines; but latterly applied in a more extended sense, not only to that art, but to all manufacturing and building operations in which engines are used. It is divided into two branches. Military and Civil. Military engineering, as a science, implies a knowledge of the construction and maintenance of fortifications, and all buildings nece ary in military posts; and hence includes a thorough instruction on every point relative to the attack and defence of places. The science also embraces the surveying of a country for the various operations of war, and consequently an acquaintance with mathematics and facility in drawing. "When at a siege the engineer has surveyed a place, he reports to the commander the weakest places, and those in which approaches may be made with most succe . He draws the lines of circumvallation and contravallation; marks out the trenches, places of arms, batteries, and lodgments; and in general directs the workmen in these operations. He should po e a practical and theoretical knowledge of gunnery. In regard to the marine branch of military engineering, it requires of course a general acquaintance with the construction of ve els, jetties, moles, and other buildings of that description. Civil engineering, as its name imports, does not include those branches above named which specially belong to the art of war; but relates to the forming or roads and bridges, railroads, the construction of machinery for all purposes, the formation of canals, aqueducts, harbours, drainage of a country, . Till the year 1760, civil engineering was little cultivated in England as a distinct occupation; at that period, manufactures began to be extended by the enterprise, the capital, and science of a number cf individuals eminent for their deep knowledge and persevering industry. New and more appropriate situations were chosen for carrying them on than the smill towns in which they had been se.ited, and where combinations and corruption made the wages of the workman extravagant. Internal navigation was consequent upon this change: com mimic at i on from liar hours to warehouses, and the converse, as well as facility of transport from factory to 3yG ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. factory, became absolutely nece ary. Hence a system of canal navigation and aqueducts, which perhaps will not be entirely superseded even by the more modern railroad. Previous to the above period, a few jetties and piers of defence were thrown out in our seaports, affording to the mariner little better protection than nature herself: they have since become harbours of refuge; some of them are capable of holding large navies. The application of the steam engine to almost every purpose, independent of its importance in manufactures, has smoothed the difficulties formerly experienced in forming works under water, and has now made rapid strides towards superseding all animals of draught. To give the faintest outline of the. science of practical engineering would be to write treatises on mathematics, mechanics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, and the other branches of natural philosophy: the reader must therefore seek for information under the separate heads of science involved in it. ENGLAND, [s. 409]