School of Engineering.

New South Wales.

The first appointment made was to a lectureship in the year 1882, with a salary of £350 a year as assistant to the Professor of Physics. The salary was afterwards raised to £500 a year, and subsequently a chair was founded with a like salary and half fees. The salary is to be increased to £900 a year without fees and the chair is to be placed on the Challis endowment.

The Professor gives lectures on (a) Applied Mechanics, (b) Civil and Mechanical Engineering, (c) Surveying and (d) Drawing. There is also a lecturer on Architecture and Building Construction who delivers forty lectures a year at a salary of £100 per annum with fees. This gentleman is an architect in practice. The staff of the department of Engineering now consists of a Professor of Engineering at a salary of £900 without fees; a Lecturer in Architecture at a salary of £100 with fees; a Mechanical Instructor at a salary of £200 with fees; an attendant at a salary of £109 4s. It is proposed that the lecturer on architecture and building construction should tor the future deliver sixty lectures a year at a cost of £150 per annum, with fees; also, to relieve the Professor of the subject of surveying, and to appoint a lecturer who would deliver the same number of lectures as the lecturer on architecture. In both cases private practice would of course be allowed. The Professor is in the habit of taking the students on Satuzdays, when there are no lectures, to see any important engineering works in progress near the city, and any new machinery, such as that of the different men-of-war and large steamers that visit Sydney. The department possesses a testing machine that cost about £660; a steam engine, eight horse-power, a number of lathes, drilling and planing machines that cost about £600; models of mechanical motion and models of pumps, turbines, &c. that cost about £1000.

The testing machine has been particularly useful; the iron, concrete, &c., to be used in large Government and Municipal contracts, being almost always tested at the University. A fee for each test is charged by the University, of which the Professor, who does the actual testing, receives three-fourths. A large number of tests of Australian timber have been made for the Mines Department of New South Wales without charge, and the results are recorded in a work printed by the Government. The cost of that portion of the buildings now in use by the Department of Engineering was about £1500, and the accommodation provided consists of a lecture room, private room, drawing room for students, machine room, workshop and boiler room. The sum of £1500 would cover the cost of special foundations for the machine room. The remainder of the building is in the occupation of the Professor of Biology. The entire cost of the building, which is built of brick with a slate roof, was about £3000.