civil engineering nature, the internal improvements of the country. The army engineers of all armies are selected from the honor graduates of the national military academies. They constitute a body of well-trained men on whom the government may call for any duty. Their pay is the highest of all soldiers and the engineers are the ranking branch of the military service. Naval engineers are highly trained mechanical and electrical engineers. For the construction and maintenance of ship yards, docks, etc., there is a special corps of Civil Engineers of the Navy, Robert E. Peary having been a member of that honorable corps of men who have a relative rank, with uniforms and all the honors pertaining to the rank, but who have no right to the use of the title. For example when Robert E. Peary was a Commander he was borne on the Navy lists as a Commander; wore the uniform of a Commander; took rank in a procession or at a reception in accordance with his relative rank; got the pay of that rank, and yet among naval officers he was Mr. Peary, Civil Engineer, U. S. N. To-day, while retired as an Admiral he has no right to have the word Admiral engraved on his calling card, unless the act retiring him with that rank was so worded as to confer that right. But we digress while discussing the strange customs of the least democratic of all the institutions of the American government.
Shortly after the Civil Engineer appeared the
