Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/697

Rh training enables him to apply himself in practice with the least difficulty and to the greatest advantage. Those who are trained in this way are always in demand, and their valuable services bring the highest financial returns.

Finally, I advocate technical education and specialization, because I believe that they are the most perfect means of securing good citizenship; for when the head and the hand are properly trained, the heart will respond to the noblest dictates of truth and virtue. But in addition to these attainments, I also believe implicitly in the broadest and most scholarly education in all that is useful and good. The specialist, as I have described him, feels the need of broad scholarship for its professional utility. In a court of justice an expert frequently calls into use sciences that have only a remote bearing upon his profession, as well as to present to the court the breadth of his scholarship and his experience. In one case a chemist may in the examination of an ore be called upon to use his knowledge of mining, metallurgy, mineralogy, and geology; in the examination of a drug he may be required to have a knowledge of pharmacy, botany, materia medica, and therapeutics; in another case his examination of a water may call into use a thorough knowledge of physics, pathology, and sanitation; while in another case of suspected criminal poisoning, when the life of the accused may rest largely in his hands, he is required to have a profound knowledge of the details of toxicology, jurisprudence, and microscopy. In fine, the sciences are so blended that a profound knowledge of one can only be acquired through the instrumentality of all the others, and the expert in the course of his professional experience will be called upon to bring into use all the various departments of useful human knowledge. Education for such professional service is a knowledge of how to use the whole of one's self, to apply the faculties with which one is endowed to all practical purposes. A liberal technical education broadens our views, removes prejudice, and causes us to welcome the views of others, and we no longer consider our methods the only ones worthy of adoption. It keeps us out of ruts and makes us desirous of being benefited by the experiences and teachings of others. It stimulates great mental activity, and thus leads to skill, investigation, discovery, and improvement.

is proposed by a M. Lotz to apply photography to the testing of bridges. Photographs are taken from a convenient spot, of the bridge unloaded and of the same weighted with the heaviest burdens it is intended to carry. The difference in the appearance of the photographs will show the extent to which the bridge yields or sags under the loads put upon it.