bridges the top chords are so curved that the stresses in vertical posts either reverse or vary between wide limits.

SUBPUNCHING AND REAMING.

To inaugurate the exclusive use of this process for all important work in structural steel, the author has fought a long and bitter fight with the manufacturers, and it begins to look as if he were going to win eventually. At any rate he has succeeded in having it adopted on all of his own work for several years past in spite of a most powerful adverse influence brought to hear upon the purchasers by certain of the largest manufacturers in the United States. Again, in his paper on Elevated Railroads he has advocated most unequivocally the adoption of subpunching and reaming on all important metalwork, and his views have been indorsed by a majority of the engineers who discussed the subject. Any reader who is in doubt concerning this question is advised to read all that is written on the subject in the original paper, the discussions, and the résumé, all of which have been published in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers for 1897.

PAINTING.

In respect to painting structural steel, engineers as a body appear to he unsettled in opinion. Each one either has a pet paint of his own or else is experimenting in a haphazard way to find one. In the résumé of the aforesaid paper on Elevated Railroads the author wrote as follows in respect to this matter;

"In short, the engineering profession is all at sea on the paint question, and is likely to remain there until there is some organized investigation made. In the author's opinion the subject is one of sufficient importance to warrant the appointment of a special committee of the Society to experiment and investigate on the subject for a term of years until some valid conclusions can be reached."

A short time ago the author followed this with a formal proposition to the Society to appoint such a committee;  but