The establishment of advanced courses of special instruction in the principal branches of mechanical engineering may, if properly "dovetailed" into the organization, be made a means of somewhat relieving the pressure that must be expected to be felt in the attempt to carry out such a course as is outlined below. The post-graduate or other special departments of instruction, in which, for example, railroad engineering, marine engineering, and the engineering of cotton, woolen, or silk manufactures, are to be taught, may be so organized that some of the lectures of the general course may be transferred to them, and the instructors in the latter course thus relieved, while the subjects so taught, being treated by specialists, may be developed more efficiently and more economically. Outlines of these advanced courses, as well as of the courses in trade instruction comprehended in the full scheme of mechanical engineering courses laid out by the writer a dozen years ago, and as since recast, might be here given, but their presentation would occupy too much space, and they are for the present omitted. The course of instruction in this branch of engineering, at the Stevens Institute of Technology, is supplemented by "Inspection Tours," which are undertaken by the graduating class toward the close of the last year, under the guidance of their instructors, in which expeditions they make the round of the leading shops in the country, within a radius of several hundred miles, often, and thus get an idea of what is meant by real business, and obtain some notion of the extent of the field of work into which they are about to enter, as well as of the importance of that work and the standing of their profession among the others of the learned professions with which that of engineering has now come to be classed.