4. Explain the construction and use of a common barometer and its vernier. Show also how a self-registering thermometer may be constructed.

5. Define specific gravity, and give a method by which the specific gravity of a body lighter than the fluid in which it is weighed may be found.

A piece of metal whose weight in water is 12 ounces is attached to a piece of wood which weighs 16 ounces in vacuo, and the weight of the two in water is 8 ounces; find the specific gravity of the wood.

6. Explain the following terins: equator, ecliptic, zenith, solstice, meredian, meredian line, nadir, horizon, perihelion, solstitial colure, magnetic variation, compression of the earth.

7. Explain how it is that in sailing round the word a day is either lost or gained.

8. Explain the following phenomena : —

(1) The changes of the seasons.

(2) The different lengths of day and night.

(3) The comparative absence of twilight in the tropics.

(4) The trade winds.

(5) The harvest moon.

(6) The phases of the moon.

9. State concisely the principal arguments by which it may be proved (1) that the earth moves round its own axis, (2) that it moves round the sun.

10. Explain fully why the clock is sometimes before and sometimes behind How often are they together? What is this phenomenon

the sun.
called?

11. On the 31st January,-when it is 3.15 p.m. at Dublin, Lat. 53.20, Long. 6·15,—what is the hour and season at Rio Janeiro, S. Lat. 23o, W. Long. 43°?

12. Describe the common astronomical telescope, and show how its magnifying power may be measured.

13. How is a telescope made achromatic?

14. What are the various effects produced on bodies by heat?

What ex

ception is there to the law that the bulk of bodies increases with their temperature? What result would follow if this exception did

not exist?

15. What hypotheses have been framed as to the formation of coal? Which do you prefer? Give your reasons.

Specimen Paper II.

1. Explain the principle of the mechanical power known as the wheel and How is the principle practically employed for obtaining

axle.

large mechanical advantage?

NATURAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.

165

2. Illustrate by reference to the inclined plane and the screw the saying "What is gained in power is lost in time."

3. What are the requisites of a good balance? Explain popularly the means practically employed for securing them.

4. Enunciate the first and second laws of motion, and state some consider. ations which suggest their truth. How is their truth finally established?

5. Explain the nature of impact between two elastic bodies. If one billiard ball moving at the rate of 4 feet per second overtakes another similar ball moving at the rate of 1 foot per second, determine their motions after impact, their elasticity being.

6. Describe and explain the principles of Bramah's press, and for any given machine, calculate the mechanical advantage.

7. Explain by a figure or otherwise how the length of the day at a place varies, and how it is that the sun does not always rise and set at the same points of the horizon.

8. Give an explanation of the tides, and account for spring and neap tides. Can you mention any local tidal peculiarities?

9. How would the present arrangement of the seasons be affected if the earth's axis

(1) Were perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic?

(2) Retaining its parallelism, were in the plane of the ecliptic?

(3) Pointed always towards the sun?

10. Explain what is meant by the term refraction.

produce upon

(1) The apparent position of a star?

What effect does it

(2) The horizontal diameter of the sun or moon?

(3) The vertical diameter ?

11. When light is incident on glass, into what portions is it divided? State the laws of reflection and refraction. Can you give any account of the two great hypotheses which have been framed to account for the phenomena of light?

12. Describe Herschel's telescope, and explain its advantages and disadvantages. Trace the course of a pencil of rays through it from an external point to the eye.

13. Coal has sometimes been accounted for as the result of drift by water of masses of vegetable matter, sometimes as an accumulation of such matter by growth in situ. What hypotheses do these views involve, and what circumstances lend probability to each view? 14. What are the usual characteristics of a mineral vein? How far is its wealth found to depend on the rock it traverses ? Describe the

methods adopted by the practical miner for the discovery of a lode. 15. State the law of multiple proportions, and illustrate it by means of the oxides of (1) sulphur, (2) carbon, (3) iron.

16. Show how to test a solution tor silver, soda, and arsenic.

CIVIL ENGINEERING.

Specimen Paper.

1. Describe what is meant by parallel motion in machinery.

2. Explain the principle upon which Nasmyth's steam hammer is designed. 3. Explain the principles upon which Bramah's hydraulic press is designed. 4. State what considerations limit the thickness of metal in a cylindrical

hydraulic press.

5. Explain the principles of the construction of a Cornish engine. 6. Define the term horse power.

7. What is Tredgold's rules for the dimensions of safety valves in lowpressure engines?

8. The diameter of the cylinder of a locomotive engine is 16 inches, the length of stroke 21 inches, the driving wheel is 6 feet in diameter. What would be force applied at the circumference of the wheel when worked to a pressure of 100 lbs. per square inch?

9. State the object of the variable cut off, and of the link motion in highpressure engines.

10. Describe a Daniel's constant battery and a Smee's battery.

11. What is an amalgamated zinc plate, and how is it prepared?

12. Show the general expression for the force of a voltaic current in a circuit in terms of the electro-motive power of each element, the No. of elements, the resistance of the liquid, the distance between the plates, and their sectional area, the length of the connecting wire, and its sectional area. (Olam's law.)

13. Describe the principles upon which Cooke and Wheatstone's needle instrument is founded.

14. Describe the principles upon which Morse's instrument is founded. 15. Explain the meaning of the term induced currents.

INDEXING AND PRÉCIS.

The Candidate will get full information on these subjects, and numerous sets of papers for Indexing and Précis-writing in the Civil Service Précis, which has been lately published.

SURVEYING.
Specimen Paper.

1. What is the length of Gunter's chain, and to what description of surveying is it particularly applicable? Give your reason for your reply.

2. The survey being plotted and laid down on a scale of 4 chains to 1 inch, what proportion does the plan bear, both lineally and superficially, to the actual size of the ground?

3. Describe the duties of the "chain follower" and "chain leader" in running a chain line.

SURVEYING AND EUCLID.

167

4. If a house, a pond, or a swamp occurs in measuring a line, how is such
an obstacle to be overcome, so as to complete the line and to continue
its measurement beyond it?

5. If it is impossible to carry the chaining to the end of a side of a triangle
of a survey, owing to the angular point being fixed on a large building,
how might the distance to this inaccessible point be determined?
6. Dispose the lines on the accompanying rough diagram (H) of a form
so as to survey the ground in the most advantageous manner.
7. Give an illustration of the mode in which the field book of a chain

survey should be kept from any one of the triangles into which you have divided the accompanying rough diagram (H) in answer to 6. 8. Make a neat plot from your own entries of the triangle selected on a scale of 4 chains to the inch. Ink in and letter the plot.

9.

Supposing you have been required to plot the whole of the work included in the rough diagram, as surveyed by means of the lines you have marked upon it, in what order would you have laid down these lines?

10. What are the different methods of ascertaining the horizontal length of distance measured on a slope?

11. Ascertain the contents of the enclosure represented by the plot (Question 8) by drawing fine pencil lines across it both longitudinally and transversely, and counting the squares.

12. Calculate the contents of the triangle supposed to have been employed
in the survey of the above inclosure from the length you have
assigned its sides in your imaginary field book, (Question 7). '
13. Explain the mode in which you would conduct traverse surveying,
supposing ordinary chain surveying to be impossible.

14. The measured distance on a slope is 729 links; the angle of inclination
from one end to the other of this distance is 1° 51', find the
horizontal and vertical distance in feet between its extremities,
entering your calculation in a convenient form for computation.
15. Explain how to adjust the level attached to the telescope of a 5 inch
theodolite.

16. What do you mean by the line of collimation of the telescope of a

theodolite?

17. In what manner, in levelling with a spirit level, may the necessity of correcting for curvature and refraction be avoided.

18. Give an illustration of the mode in which you would keep a field in levelling for sections.

EUCLID.
I.

Specimen Paper.

1. If two triangles have two angles of one equal to two angles of the other, each to each, and one side equal to one side, viz., the side adjacent to the equal angles in each; then shall the other sides be equal, each to each, and also the third angle of the one to the third angle of the other.

V

2. To a given straight line apply a parallelogram, which shall be equal to a given triangle, and have one of its angles equal to a given rectilineal angle.

3. If a straight line be bisected, and produced to any point; the rectangle contained by the whole line thus produced, and the part of it produced, together with the square of half the line bisected, is equal to the straight line which is made up of the half and the part produced.

4. The diameter is the greatest straight line in a circle; and, of all others, that which is nearer to the centre is always greater than one more remote and the greater is nearer to the centre than the less. 5. A segment of a circle being given, describe the circle of which it is the segment.

6. If the outward angle of a triangle made by producing one of its sides be divided into two equal angles by a straight line which also cuts the base produced, the segments between the dividing line and the extremities of the base have the same ratio which the other sides of the triangle have to one another.

7. Equiangular parallelograms have to one another the ratio which is compounded of the ratios of their sides.

8. Trisect a given straight line.

9. Construct a rectangle which shall be equal to a given square (1) when the sum, and (2) when the difference of two adjacent sides is equal to a given line.

10. A tangent to a circle at the point A intersects two parallel tangents B and C, the points of contact of which with the circle are D, E, respectively show that if BE, CD intersect in F, AF is parallel to the tangents BD, CE.

II.

1. Define a circle and a rhombus, and give Euclid's 12th axiom (relating to parallel lines).

2. If from the ends of a side of a triangle there be drawn two straight

lines to a point within the triangle, these shall be less than the other two sides of the triangle, but shall contain a greater angle. 3. What is meant by a corollary? State and prove the corollaries to the proposition in which it is proved that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles.

4. If a straight line be divided into any two parts, the square of the whole line is equal to the squares of the two parts, together with twice the rectangle contained by the parts.

5. Divide a given straight line into two parts, so that the rectangle contained by the whole and one of the parts shall be equal to the square of the other part.

6. Draw a straight line from a given point, either without or in the circumference, which shall touch a given circle.