Excerpt from The Epitome, 1909, Vol. 33 When he was called to the Chair of Civil Engineering at Lehigh Univer sity in 1878, the young instructor in the Sheffield Scientific School showed brilliant promise, as evidenced particularly in his work, Method of Least Squares. Far be it from us to say that Prof. Merriman would not have evolved in another sphere. But perhaps it is not too much to say that the struggling young institution furnished as favorable an environment as any; that its poverty was a stimulus and the absolutely free hand given him an inspiration. Prof. Merriman made the Department of Civil Engineering in Lehigh University. Likewise Lehigh made Prof. Merriman the teacher he became by furnishing a fertile field for the particular seed he had to sow. The benefit was mutual. A concrete instance of this is found in the matter of text-books written by Prof. Merriman. Some of his most impor tant works, the books on the materials of engineering and on bridges, were largely the outgrowth of lectures in the classroom. The Treatise on Hydraulics was prepared as the result Of work in instituting the Univer sity's hydraulic laboratory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.