FORE:The functions and adaptations of machinery constitute, as already explained, the science of mechanical engineering. The functions of a machine are a foundation on which its plans are based; hence machine functions and machine effect are matters to which the attention of an apprentice should first [11] be directed.

FORE:It was nearly four o'clock before Prout raised the trail. On the previous day but one a cashier at the National Credit Bank had changed ��400 in gold into notes for a stranger who answered to the description of the murdered man. Prout dashed down to Leadenhall Street in a fast hansom. The cashier was a little nervous, but quite willing to speak freely.

FORE:"It's my duty, madame," Prout began, "to ask you to----"We have this great advantage in dealing with Plato��that his philosophical writings have come down to us entire, while the thinkers who preceded him are known only through fragments and second-hand reports. Nor is the difference merely accidental. Plato was the creator of speculative literature, properly so called: he was the first and also the greatest artist that ever clothed abstract thought in language of appropriate majesty and splendour; and it is probably to their beauty of form that we owe the preservation of his writings. Rather unfortunately, however, along with the genuine works of the master, a certain number of pieces have been handed down to us under his name, of which some are almost universally admitted to be spurious, while the authenticity of others is a question on which the best scholars are still divided. In the absence of any very cogent external evidence, an immense amount of industry and learning has been expended on this subject, and the arguments employed on both sides sometimes make us doubt whether the reasoning powers of philologists are better developed than, according to Plato, were those of mathematicians in his time. The176 two extreme positions are occupied by Grote, who accepts the whole Alexandrian canon, and Krohn, who admits nothing but the Republic;115 while much more serious critics, such as Schaarschmidt, reject along with a mass of worthless compositions several Dialogues almost equal in interest and importance to those whose authenticity has never been doubted. The great historian of Greece seems to have been rather undiscriminating both in his scepticism and in his belief; and the exclusive importance which he attributed to contemporary testimony, or to what passed for such with him, may have unduly biassed his judgment in both directions. As it happens, the authority of the canon is much weaker than Grote imagined; but even granting his extreme contention, our view of Plato��s philosophy would not be seriously affected by it, for the pieces which are rejected by all other critics have no speculative importance whatever. The case would be far different were we to agree with those who impugn the genuineness of the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Phil��bus, and the Laws; for these compositions mark a new departure in Platonism amounting to a complete transformation of its fundamental principles, which indeed is one of the reasons why their authenticity has been denied. Apart, however, from the numerous evidences of Platonic authorship furnished by the Dialogues themselves, as well as by the indirect references to them in Aristotle��s writings, it seems utterly incredible that a thinker scarcely, if at all, inferior to the master himself��as the supposed imitator must assuredly have been��should have consented to let his reasonings pass current under a false name, and that, too, the name of one whose teaching he in some respects controverted; while there is a further difficulty in assuming that his existence could pass unnoticed at a period marked by intense literary and philosophical activity. Readers who177 wish for fuller information on the subject will find in Zeller��s pages a careful and lucid digest of the whole controversy leading to a moderately conservative conclusion. Others will doubtless be content to accept Prof. Jowett��s verdict, that ��on the whole not a sixteenth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy.��116 To which we may add that the Platonic dialogues, whether the work of one or more hands, and however widely differing among themselves, together represent a single phase of thought, and are appropriately studied as a connected series.

FORE:During the meeting of the British Association in Belfast (1874), the committee appointed to investigate the means of teaching Physical Science, reported that "the most serious obstacle discovered was an absence from the minds of the pupils of a firm and clear grasp of the concrete facts forming a base of the reasoning processes they are called upon to study; and that the use of text-books should be made subordinate to an attendance upon lectures and demonstrations."

FORE:Mr Ransome of Ipswich, England, where this system of template moulding originated, has invented a process of fitting templates for gear wheels and other kinds of casting by pouring melted white metal around to mould the fit instead of cutting it through the templates; this effects a great saving in expense, and answers in many cases quite as well as the old plan.

FORE:112