SHEDD, Joel Herbert, civil engineer, born in Pepperell, Massachusetts, 31 May, 1834. He was educated in Bridgewater academy, and then took a three-years' course in civil engineering in a Boston office. On the completion of his studies he established himself in his profession in Boston, but in 1869 removed to Providence, Rhode Island, where he has since resided. In 1860 he was appointed commissioner for Massachusetts on the Concord and Sudbury rivers, and he has been chairman of the state board of harbor commissioners of Rhode Island since its organization in 1876. He was commissioner from Rhode Island to the World's fair in Paris in 1878, and chairman of the Rhode Island body of the interstate commission on boundary-lines between that state and Connecticut in 1886-'7 ; and was also at the head of the similar commission on the encroachments of Pawtucket river in 1887-'8. Mr. Shedd was elected a member of the American society of civil engineers in 1869, and was chairman of its sub-committee on sewerage and sanitary engineering at the World's fair in Philadelphia in 1876. He has executed many engineering works in the cities of the New England and the middle states, as well as for the United States government and the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The most important single work of engineering that he has designed and executed is the Providence water-works, costing $4,500,000. Every element of these works was studied fundamentally, and nothing was copied. They have been much referred to, and have a European reputation. Mr. Shedd has probably done more to improve the quality of American hydraulic cements than any other engineer, both by the rigidity of his demands and by his careful testing of the material. He has been frequently called on to testify on engineering matters in court, and he has contributed largely to professional journals. Among his articles are the section on" Rain and Drainage" in French's "Farm Drainage" (New York, 1859) ; " Essay on Drainage" (Boston, 1859) ; and reports on "Ventilation" (1864) ; "Roads" (1865) ; " Water-Works" (1868-'9); and " Sewerage" (1874-'84). The latter include reports to nearly all of the principal cities of New England.-His wife, Julia Ann Clark, born in Newport, Maine, 8 August, 1834, has contributed on art to various periodicals, and, besides translations in book-form, has published "Famous Painters and Paintings" (Boston, 1874); " The Ghiberti Gates" (1879) ; "Famous Sculptors and Sculpture" (1881); and "Raphael, his Madonnas and Holy Families" (1883).