se he considers the
live load either on one span only, or on alternate spans." It is just in
such methods that the "practical engineer" is inconsistent. If he is
going to consider the beams as continuous, he should find the full
continuous beam moment and provide for it. It is just this disposition
to take an advantage wherever one can be taken, without giving proper
consideration to the disadvantage entailed, which is condemned in the
paper. The "practical engineer" will reduce his bending moment in the
beam by a large fraction, because of continuity, but he will not
reinforce over the supports for full continuity. Reinforcement for full
continuity was not recommended, but it was intimated that this is the
only consistent method, if advantage is taken of continuity in reducing
the principal bending moment.

Mr. Chapman says that an arch should not be used where the abutments are
unstable. Unstable is a relative and indefinite word. If he means that
abutments for arches should never be on anything but rock, even such a
foundation is only quite stable when the abutment has a vertical rock
face to take horizontal thrusts. If arches could be built only under
such conditions, few of them would be built. Some settlement is to be
expected in almost any soil, and because of horizontal thrusts there is
also a tendency for arch abutments to rotate. It is this tendency which
opens up cracks in spandrels of arches, and makes the assumption of a
fixed tangent at the springing line, commonly made by the elastic
theorist, absolute foolishness.

Mr. Beyer has developed a novel explanation of the way stirrups act, but
it is one which is scarcely likely to meet with more serious
consideration than the steel girder to which he refers, which has
neither web plate nor diagonals, but only verticals connecting the top
and bottom flanges. This style of girder has been considered by American
engineers rather as a curiosity, if not a monstrosity. If vertical
stirrups acted to reinforce little vertical cantilevers, there would
have to be a large number of them, so that each little segment of the
beam would be insured reinforcement.

The writer is utterly at a loss to know what Professor Ostrup means by
his first few paragraphs. He says that in the first point two designs
are mentioned and a third condemned. The second design, whatever it is,
he lays at the writer's door in these words: "The author's second design
is an invention of his own, w