12 THE BATTALION. BATTALION, ATTENTION! I wish to announce a few things con cerning our monthly magazine. It is gotten out by the members of the Austin and Calliopean literary societies, and changes hands each year. The Battalion is now entering upon its eighth year of publication, and under the management of Mr. H. E. Elrod, and by the assistance of the other officers, will no' doubt be as interesting as ever before. Rest. THE Y. M. C. A. The College Young Men’s Christian As sociation holds its regular meeting in the chapel every Sunday evening at 4 o’clock. Some one of the members has a subject selected and is leader for the evening, but all who are present are called upon to tell what impression the passage of scripture under consideration made upon them, and in this way we have the op portunity of seeing several views of some of the beautiful pictures that the apos tles have left us. There is also a bible study class in connection with the Y. M. C. A. The students who belong to this class have their meeting in the barracks every Sun day night, and are using Sharman’s Studies in the Life of Christ. I take this opportunity to thank the officers of the College and the students of the past session for their generosity in helping to send me to the Southern Stu dents’ Conference at Asheville, N. C., last summer, and in the next issue of this paper I will endeavor to tell them some thing of my trip. M. F. Thomas, President of Y. M. C. A. CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT. The department of civil engineering has entered upon the session of 1900-’01 under very auspicious circumstances. It has a larger number of students than it has ever had before in its history. They are all excellent fellows, and show by the earnest manner in which they have be gun work that they have fully deter mined to make the best of their oppor tunities. The increasing demand for graduates of this department affords very gratify ing evidence as to the character of the work it is doing. The majority of the students who went out from us last year are occupying positions of more or less prominence. The chief engineer of the largest railway system in Texas stated a year ago that, excepting himself, the college men in his department all came from the A. and M. College. Another in teresting fact that may be mentioned in this connection, is that sixty per cent of the graduates of the past six years in the Civil Engineering course are now en gaged in civil engineering. If one may judge from present indi cations, before the weight of years be comes burdensome to the stalwart frame of the energetic, enthusiastic, and learned professor of this department the great enterprises of constructing railways, high ways, and bridges, of straightening and deepening the channels of our rivers, and improving the sanitary conditions of our cities, will be largely under the su-