Probably few materials have been found more generally useful to
the civil engineer, in works which are not of metal, than has been
Portland cement. It should be noticed that during the last twenty-two
years great improvements have been made in the grinding and in the
quality of the cement. These have been largely due to the labors
in England of our member, Mr. John Grant, to the labors of foreign
engineers following in his footsteps, and to the zeal and intelligence
with which the manufacturers have followed up the question, from a
scientific as well as from a practical point of view, not resting
until they were able with certainty to produce a cement such as the
engineer needed. I do not know that there is very much to be said in
the way of progress (so far as the finished results are concerned) in
the materials which Portland cement and other mortars are intended to
unite. Clean gravel and ballast and clean sand are, I presume, very
much the same in the year 1884 as they were not only in the year 1862,
but as they were in the year 1. The same remark applies to stone
and to all other natural building materials; and, indeed, even the
artificial material brick cannot in these days be said to surpass in
quality the bricks used by the Romans in this island nineteen hundred
years ago, but as regards the mode of manufacture and the materials
employed there is progress to be noted. The brick-making machine and
the Hoffmann kiln have economized labor and fuel, while attempts have
been made, which I trust may prove successful, for utilizing the clay
which is to be found in the form of slate in those enormous mounds
of waste which disfigure the landscape in the neighborhood of slate
quarries. Certain artificial stones, moreover, appear at last to be
made with a uniformity and a power of endurance, and in respect of
these qualities compare favorably with the best natural stone, and
still more favorably having regard to the fact that they can be made
of the desired dimensions and shape, thus being ready for use without
labor of preparation.