PREFACE. Errors and Omissions 6, for A' = (a +f+d) cos o read A' = (a' + d) cos 14, for 1128 read 1120 5, omit 1. 11, for 12.18 read 13.18 14, for 16.65 read 12.65 deal with the setting-out of the railway cugin often more actually devoted to the design of complicated cross-over roads, others intended to apply to the special work of preliminary deposited plans of Parliamentary surveys for Railway Bills, while some seemed rather to aim at presenting the student with a large set of nicely drawn plans for him to contemplate as models in drawing rather than at supplying him with information useful in surveying, and others aimed at providing the designer rather than the surveyor with a convenient set of trigo PREFACE. THE object of this small work on Survey-Practice for all ordinary purpose's is to supply a special want, which manifested itself in the inability of the author to find any single published work which would answer the purposes of his pupils and serve as a general book of reference for methods, formulæ, and forms of record. He found many books on Surveying, some dealing exclusively with chain-surveys of small plots of ground, some dealing purely with large Trigonometrical surveying operations carried out with enormously expensive and refined instruments and appliances, some intended to deal with the setting-out of the railway engineer, but often more actually devoted to the design of complicated cross-over roads, others intended to apply to the special work of preliminary deposited plans of Parliamentary surveys for Railway Bills, while some seemed rather to aim at presenting the student with a large set of nicely drawn plans for him to contemplate as models in drawing rather than at supplying him with information useful in surveying, and others aimed at providing the designer rather than the surveyor with a convenient set of trigo nometrical, logarithmic, and numerical tables for use in office calculations. Each and all of these works, though perhaps excellent in their way and for some special purpose, failed to serve as a general guide in survey-practice, while their generally too comprehensive titles sometimes were deceiving to the purchaser; there remained therefore the two alternatives of getting a small library for reference on each subject or of giving written instructions to pupils for their use; the latter plan having been adopted, the notes have been since condensed into the following pages. This book is of course a compilation in the general sense of the word; all books are either compilations from recorded or observed facts, habits, customs, events, methods, or of thoughts and ideas occurring to persons under different circumstances and moulded into some special shape; but this book, not having been compiled from other books, is not a compilation in the strictly just meaning of the word; occasionally other books or persons, and their methods, are quoted and referred to with names attached, but, on the whole, the work is a compilation deduced from practice or experience, based on verbal and exemplified instruction received in early days, the results of which were subsequently modified and altered wherever any improvement seemed practicable. While stating this, the author wishes to express his gratitude to his former instructors, and to acknowledge them fully as his practical guides up to a certain period of life in various branches of work; they were- |
