or after his attendance at the technical school, it will be greatly to
his advantage. The technical school has, however, a distinct field; and
its province is not to be confounded with that of the trade school.
The former is devoted to instruction in the theory and practice of a
profession which calls for service upon the men from the latter--which
makes demand upon a hundred trades--in the prosecution of its designs.
The latter teaches, simply, the practical methods of either of the
trades subsidiary to the several branches of engineering, with only so
much of science as is essential to the intelligent use of the tools and
the successful application of the methods of work of the trade taught.
The distinction between the two departments of education, both of which
are of comparatively modern date, is not always appreciated in the
United States, although always observed in those countries of Europe
in which technical and trade education have been longest pursued as
essential branches of popular instruction. Throughout France and
Germany, every large town has its trade schools, in which the trades
most generally pursued in the place are systematically taught; and every
large city has its technical school, in which the several professions
allied to engineering are studied with special development of those to
which the conditions prevailing at the place give most prominence and
local importance.

A course of trade instruction, as the writer would organize it, would
consist, first, in the teaching of the apprentice the use of the tools
of his trade, the nature of its materials, and the construction and
operation of the machinery employed in its prosecution. He would next be
taught how to shape the simpler geometrical forms in the materials of
his trade, getting out a straight prism, a cylinder, a pyramid, or a
sphere, of such size and form as may be convenient; getting lines and
planes at right angles, or working to miter; practicing the working of