_Bowstring Girders._--Having had occasion to get out the stresses in girders of the bowstring form, the author was not satisfied with the common formulæ for the diagonal braces, which, owing to the difficulty of apportioning the stresses amongst five members meeting in one point, were to a large extent based on an assumption as to the course taken by the stresses. As far as he could ascertain it, the ordinary method was to assume that one set of diagonals, or those inclined, say, to the right-hand, acted at one time, and those inclined in the opposite direction at another time, and, in making the calculations, the apportionment of the stresses was effected by omitting one set. Calculations made in this way give results which would justify the common method adopted in the construction of bowstring girders, viz., of bracing the verticals and leaving the diagonal unbraced; but an inspection of many existing examples of these bridges during the passing of the live load showed that there was something defective in them. The long unbraced ties vibrated considerably, and evidently got slack during a part of the time that the live load was passing over the bridge. In order to get some definite formulæ for these girders free from any assumed conditions as to the course taken by the stresses, or their apportionment amongst the several members meeting at each joint, the author adopted the following method, which, he believes, has not hitherto been used by engineers: Let Fig. 1 represent a bowstring girder, the stresses in which it is desired to ascertain under the loads shown on it by the circles, the figures in the small circles representing the dead load per bay, and that in the large circle the total of live and dead load per bay of the main girders. A girder, Fig. 1A, with parallel flanges, verticals, and diagonals, and depth equal to the length of one bay, was drawn with the same loading as the bowstring. The stresses in the flanges were taken out, as shown in the figure, keeping separate those caused by diagonals inclined to the left from those caused by diagonals inclined to the right. The vertical component of the stress in the end bay of the top flange of the bowstring girder, Fig. 1, was, of course, equal to the pressure on the abutment, and the stress in the first bay of the bottom flange and the horizontal component of the stress in the first bay of the top flange was obtained by multiplying this pressure by the length of the bay and dividing by the length of the first vertical. The horizontal component of the stress in any other bay of the top or bottom flange of the bowstring girder--Fig. 1--was found by adding together the product of the stress in the parallel flanged girder, caused by diagonals inclining to the right, divided by the depth of the bowstring girder at the left of the bay, and multiplied by the depth of the parallel flanged girder; and the product of the stress caused by diagonals inclining to the left