cars, and other trade specialities, which
can lay little or no claim to novelty. It is, furthermore, a crying
sin in the estimation of our English critic that American technical
journals do not separate their advertisements from the subject matter;
and he thinks that when Yankee editors learn that trade announcements
are out of place in the body of a journal, they will see how to make
their journals pay by making them higher priced. Now we venture to
say, without intending to give offence, that Yankee editors understand
their business quite as well as do English editors; and it is
presumable, at least, that they know what suits their readers on
this side, much better than do English editors. We venture to
suggest--modestly, of course--that journalism in the two countries
is not the same, and should the editor of _Engineering_ undertake
to transfer his system of intellectual labor to this side of the
Atlantic, he would not be long in making the discovery that those
wandering Bohemian engineers, who, he tells us, are in sorrow and
heaviness over the short-comings of American technical journals, would
turn out after all to be slender props for him to lean upon. We think
it probable, however, that with a little more snap, a journal like
_Engineering_ might possibly attain a circulation, in this country, of
500 or 1000 copies weekly.

Why, American engineers have scarcely yet been able to organize
themselves into an association for mutual advancement in their
profession, much less to give the reading public the benefit of their
experience and labors! This fact alone ought, of itself, to satisfy
_Engineering_ that no such journal could profitably exist in this
country. Whenever our American engineers are ready to support such a
journal, there will be no difficulty in finding a publisher.

_Engineering_, in its casual reference to the various technical
journals of America, omits to name our leading scientific monthly, but
introduces with just commendation a venerable cotemporary, now upwards
of three score years of age. Now, it is no disparagement of this
really modest monthly to say, that perhaps there are not sixty hundred
people in the States who know it, even by name; and so far as the use
of "scissors and paste" are made available in our technical journals,
we venture the assertion that the editorial staff expenses of the
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN are as great, if not greater, than those of
_Engineering_. The question, howeve