uire in each more or less of every quality of intellect, training,
and character. At the different stages, certain of these qualities
are in predominant demand: in the first stage, financial insight;
in the second, "engineering sense"; in the third, training and
experience; in the fourth and fifth, executive ability.

A certain amount of compass over the project during the whole
five stages is required by all branches of the engineering
profession,--harbor, canal, railway, waterworks, bridge, mechanical,
electrical, etc.; but in none of them so completely and in such
constant combination is this demanded as in mining.

The determination of the commercial value of projects is a greater
section of the mining engineer's occupation than of the other
engineering branches. Mines are operated only to earn immediate
profits. No question of public utility enters, so that all mining
projects have by this necessity to be from the first weighed from
a profit point of view alone. The determination of this question
is one which demands such an amount of technical knowledge and
experience that those who are not experts cannot enter the
field,--therefore the service of the engineer is always demanded in
their satisfactory solution. Moreover, unlike most other engineering
projects, mines have a faculty of changing owners several times
during their career, so that every one has to survive a periodic
revaluation. From the other branches of engineering, the electrical
engineer is the most often called upon to weigh the probabilities
of financial success of the enterprise, but usually his presence
in this capacity is called upon only at the initial stage, for
electrical enterprises seldom change hands. The mechanical and
chemical branches are usually called upon for purely technical
service on the demand of the operator, who decides the financial
problems for himself, or upon works forming but units in undertakings
where the opinion on the financial advisability is compassed by some
other branch of the engineering profession. The other engineering
branches, even less often, are called in for financial advice,
and in those branches involving works of public utility the
profit-and-loss phase scarcely enters at all.

Given that the project has been determined upon, and that the enterprise
has entered upon the second stage, that of determination of method of
attack, the immediate commercial result limits the mining engineer's
every plan and