bodies. Statics, therefore, applies to bridges and all stationary frames, as well as embankments, retaining walls, river and canal improvements, etc. Kinetics deals with engines and machines.
In hydraulics the engineer has been employed from time immemorial. At first his employment on harbor work was in the government service, connected with the navy, but later he was employed as a civil engineer to design and build harbors for vessels of commerce. Centuries of dock and wharf building developed rules and styles which have not been much changed by the advance in scientific instruction of engineers in the past century. Navigable canals were for a time the great training schools for engineers, but they are everywhere giving way to railways, except where interested agitation keeps alive public interest in old-fashioned things. A few canals are kept up at enormous expense to satisfy artificially created public demands, supposedly to act as a deterrant upon railway rates. Sentiment, however, rather than common sense business principles, keeps the small navigable canal in existence. The present day hydraulic engineer finds his chief employment in the design, construction and operation of water works for towns and cities; canals, reservoirs and dams for irrigation; canals and ditches for land drainage; the improvement and regulation of rivers.
The first writer of note on public water supplies
