Is writing really taught, or is it used merely as a means of employing a class which the teacher is too busy to attend to? Is spelling taught by means of several methods in combination, by spelling rules, word-building, and dictation, and by appeal to the eye as well as to the ear?

This subject is the most difficult of all to test by inspection; there is often too much reliance on word-building, there is certainly too much laborious learning of isolated words. When a rule is taught—and to some extent even English spelling can be reduced to rule the words used to illustrate it, or words of similar formation, should be embodied in a piece of dictation, so that children learn to write words correctly in their ordinary combinations with dissimilar words, combinations such as they meet with in daily life. Teachers, as a rule, are thoroughly alive to the insufficiency of word-building by itself, and in some schools, even in some infants' schools, children are encouraged to put every word they learn into a sentence of their own-a most useful exercise for more purposes than spelling.

In arithmetic is the proportion between teaching and practice duly observed? Do the elder children work too much from cards? Is sufficient time given in fresh lessons to explanation of principles and in lessons of recapitulation to careful correction and blackboard exposition of errors, not a mere hurried entry of "R" or "W" opposite a sum in the last five minutes of the lesson, a method of marking which can of itself teach a child nothing and often leaves copying undetected?

Are the lessons finished in the allotted time, so that the point is driven home and not left half explained? Are the children helped too much, or are they allowed to work the elementary processes for themselves, and so trained by constant practice to habitual rapidity and accuracy of calculation ?

Are the sums set duly varied in character or all in the same groove? Are the children set from the beginning to work long abstract sums of which they do not understand even the notation, or is a new rule introduced by a carefully graduated and progressive series of simple concrete sums, leading by degrees to the longer abstract sums which may be necessary to secure accuracy?

Nature Knowledge.

It is not surprising to learn from the report of Mr. J. A. Willis, the Chief Inspector for the south-western division of England, that the attempts to introduce really scientific lessons on common natural objects into rural elementary schools have not been altogether successful. Of the nature of the difficulties in the way and the extent to which they have been overcome, Mr. Willis says:—

I should be sorry to seem to undervalue the conscientious work of the great body of rural teachers, who are teaching according to the light which they have received; but the facts remain that the work of the Inspector in this particular matter has not been very fruitful: he has been expected to act as a sort of ambulant training college among teachers of mature years, of fixed habits of thought, and sometimes of insufficient knowledge of their own shortcomings; his text has been, if not to worship what they have burned, at any rate to burn what they have hitherto worshipped-to put aside their idols in the shape of pictures and fragments of material stuck on cards, as to which they have some letterpress to guide them, and turn to humbler realities for which they must depend on their own common sense; to omit the Cheetah, the Springbok, the Cassowary, and the Apteryx, in favour of a set of subjects maddening from their very simplicity, and to frame a syllabus with an "educational" purpose, while they are guiltless of any but that of satisfying the Inspector. In very truth, there is not only reason but necessity for "going slow."

COUNTY COUNCIL SCHOLARSHIPS.

THE National Association for the promotion of Technical and Secondary Education has made a third inquiry into the scholarship schemes of English County and County Borough Councils. The information collected on the two previous occasions referred to the provision of scholarships during the financial years 1893-4 and 1894-5, while the present report is concerned with the year 1899-1900. The particulars brought together during the most recent investigation are much more exhaustive than in the former cases. A full account of the conclusions to which the present return has led is published in the Record of the National Association, and the following particulars have been derived from it :

The Scope of the Inquiry.

The present return was drafted in seven sections, viz., scholarships in:-(1) evening technical and science and art classes; (2) technical schools and science and art schools; (3) secondary (not agricultural) schools (including grammar and other endowed schools, schools of science, and higher-grade board schools); (4) universities and institutions of university. rank (not agricultural); (5) agricultural and horticultural schools and colleges (including both migratory and fixed dairy schools and institutes, and secondary schools and higher institutions with agricultural departments or sides); (6) domestic economy schools or centres (including those for cookery, nursing, ambulance, hygiene, &c.); (7) courses for elementary teachers (including those in foreign countries). The return was intended to cover scholarships continued automatically from previous years, as well as those renewed or specially extended, in order that a statement of all the scholarships in force might be presented. It is to be feared, however, that this object of the return has not been fully grasped by all the officials of local authorities.

The information given does not, in every case, necessarily represent all the scholarships that are offered, though it may all those that are in force. Certain scholarships may not have been awarded in the particular year dealt with by the return.

In regard to elementary and other teachers especially, the method of assistance renders the task of tabulation difficult. This is so on account of the number of local authorities who assist the training of teachers by simply paying their fares or fees, or both, involved by attendance at recognised centres, or by directly establishing training classes or centres themselves. Both these forms of aid act in the same way and effect the same results as the award of scholarships or exhibitions would do; yet it was impossible to present the facts in an appropriate style in the present return. Again, small scholarships and free studentships are sometimes provided by urban councils or local committees from funds allocated to them by county councils, and, in a much smaller degree, such bodies augment the scholarships granted to their students by the county councils. But all such scholarships or additional aid have been strictly excluded from the return. On the other hand, the value of free tuition, both in municipal and other institutions, has been, as far as possible, included in the stated value of the scholarships. This has been done as local authorities pay, in one form or another, the fees of scholars in voluntary institutions, even if no grant for maintenance is given, or provide the means for giving the tuition in their own institutions.

Higher Technical Instruction.

The return brings out clearly one very grave defect in the scholarship schemes of the different councils. We cannot do better than quote the report: "The provision of facilities for the passage of students from technical schools to higher colleges

or universities is distinctly faulty; in fact, it does not even exist in many localities, while in others the only means available is by Government scholarships and exhibitions, supplemented in some cases by local funds or private means.”

Until a really determined effort is made to give the best of the students in ordinary technical classes an opportunity of studying the higher branches of applied science under proper conditions it is useless to think of competing with German and American manufacturers on equal terms

Summary.

There are at present only three county councils in England who do not provide scholarships and exhibitions of any kind. These are Huntingdonshire, Rutland and Soke of Peterborough; but neither of them do all that is possible for technical education, inasmuch as they divert part of their shares of the Residue Grant to relieve the rates. Two county councils have actually created or started scholarship schemes since the year 1894-5. These are Cornwall and the Isle of Ely. With regard to the county borough councils, 14 out of a total of 61 do not yet directly provide scholarships. These are Barrow, Birkenhead, Bury, Coventry, Croydon, Exeter, Gateshead, Hastings, Huddersfield, Ipswich, Leeds, Lincoln, Sunderland, Wigan.

In at least six of these towns, however, provision for this kind of assistance to students will soon be, or is otherwise, made, and wholly or partly meets local requirements. In Bury a number of small scholarships and studentships tenable at the technical school are founded by private means. In Huddersfield, about 45 scholarships, varying in value from the cost of free tuition to a sum of £50, are attached to the institutions receiving money grants from the Corporation, but there is no cohesive scheme in operation. In Leeds scholarships are established in a similar way. In Ipswich an attempt was made to start a full scheme of scholarships for the working classes, but the competition was so small that the scheme was held in abeyance. It is probable that a scholarship scheme will soon be drafted for Lincoln. Wigan can almost be classed as possessing an efficient scheme; one of the terms of the special joint arrangement that has existed for years with the Lancashire County Council in respect of the local mining and technical college is that residents in Wigan are eligible to compete for all the county scholarships and exhibitions offered.

Taking county and county borough councils together, there are now 93 out of 110 such local authorities who provide scholarships in one form or another; this represents an advance of 23 authorities over the year 1894-5. The total number and value of the scholarships and exhibitions in force under the schemes of 90 of those 93 authorities during the year 1899-1900 were 19,971 and £156,793 respectively: these figures represent respectively a net increase over 1894-5 of 8,302 scholarships and exhibitions, and of £62,578 expended upon them. The following table summarises the particulars respecting each type of scholarship ::

SCHOLARSHIPS IN FORCE DURING THE YEAR 1899-1900.
No. of No. of
Councils. Scholarships.

Total Annual Value.

£ 7,862

17,064 77,349

(4) At Higher Institutions and Universities

The necessity for giving definite power to local authorities to enable them to recognise institutions situate outside their districts as places of tenure for their scholarships was made manifest soon after the passing of the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890. The necessity was fully met by the enabling Clause 1 (b) of the Technical Instruction Act, 1891. By that clause local authorities were empowered to provide or assist in providing scholarships for or pay or assist in paying the fees of students ordinarily resident in their districts at schools or institutions outside those districts. The value of the Clause, to the county councils at any rate, is clearly substantiated by the information furnished by the present return. The following is a list of the number of county councils who definitely allow the various types of scholarships to be institutions :

Scholarships at

Evening Classes and Technical and Science and Art Schools

Secondary Schools
Higher Institutions

Agricultural and Dairy Institutes
Domestic Science Schools..
For Elementary and other Teachers

held at outside

Councils providing such scholarships.

These facts by no means exhaust the large amount of information concerning the national supply of scholarships which this valuable report contains. We recommend any one who is interested in the history of English education to procure a copy of the July, 1901, number of the Record for future reference.

THE SCHOOL PULPIT.

Leaving Home.

By the Rev. W. J. FOXELL, M.A. (Lond.), Minor Canon of Canterbury Cathedral. Author of "God's Garden," "Sunday Talks with Boys," "In a Plain Path," &c.

HAS it not sometimes happened to you in the ramblings of a summer holiday to have climbed a hill, and to look back over the long steep path you have trodden, down into the distant valley from whence you started? How different does that world down there now appear! The road, which was then wide enough for two carriages to run abreast, now looks like a little garden-path: the long, straggling, village street, which took you a good five minutes to walk through, lies there with all its cottages and houses huddled together apparently within a few yards of one another: the village church itself seems no larger than a toy. Some things you cannot now see at all, the turn in the hill has hidden them; and other things, how different! Which is the true view? Is it the near, or the distant? There is more philosophy in that question than you or I have time to discuss now; but this much is certain : things are what our point of view makes them; and distance has a great power of enchantment. Distance is your true magician.

It is with time as with space. Life, too, has its atmosphere and perspective: like nature, it rarely shows a hard line at a distance. Time idealizes our childhood. Wordsworth, in dreamy Platonist mood, thought of life as a journey, in which as years go on we travel farther and farther from that heaven which "lies about us in our infancy" :—

Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy;

It is always so with him whose boyhood was happy. But boyhood has its sorrows too; scars of wounds which it will carry to the grave. In many cases time, the great healer, has softened their sharp outline; and the grown man has ere this cast over those early griefs a halo of rich sentiment—the luxury of self-pity. Still, truth it is that there are some sorrows of boyhood which, whenever they come back to memory, are fresh and poignant as in the day when first their bitterness was felt. They are not so much scars as open wounds. I am thinking of that wrench to the young heart when home is left and school life begun. What trial a man ever had to endure in after-life was more cruel than that pang? Then for the first time he really learnt that life in the world meant separation from father and mother, and all the delights and happy licenses of home. Then for the first time he felt that he had been shoved forward to fight, as men fight, in the front rank; that he had to fend for himself.

Scientific men tell us that life is easy and happy in proportion as the organism is in harmony or correspondence with its environment. A young boy, who has left home and is suddenly planted down amongst scores, or perhaps hundreds of boys at school, is a creature transported to a new environment. He has to learn to adapt himself to new conditions, and the process of adaptation is painful in proportion as it is slow. What a sense not so much of solitude as of blankness oppresses "new" boy of sensitive feelings! A man suddenly waking up in the planet Mars could not be more bewildered. What are the inhabitants of this new world, what are their laws, their customs, what even their language, are questions which he has to solve. Everything is so different from the familiar little world of home.

a

Macaulay, "the sensitive, home-loving boy," felt keenly leaving home. We learn from Trevelyan, his biographer, that the commencement of his second half-year at school," perhaps the darkest season of a boy's existence, was marked by an unusually severe and prolonged attack of home-sickness." Trevelyan considerately suppresses young Macaulay's first letter, written from school after the summer holidays; but the next letter-which he gives-"is melancholy enough." The boy, who was then not quite thirteen, in writing to his mother, "You told me," he says, “ I should be happy when I once came here ; but not an hour passes in which I do not shed tears at thinking of home. there is nothing which I would not give for one instant's sight of home. that home which absence renders still dearer to me." The late Lord Shaftesbury's boyhood was co-temporaneous with Macaulay's: the great philanthropist was but six months younger than the famous historian; and while the latter was at the private school kept by the Rev. Mr. Preston, at Shelford, the former was at Harrow. But at Harrow young Ashley was happy; the time of acute misery was past and gone. When only seven he had been sent to Manor House, Chiswick, a preparatory school, whose master was the Rev. Dr. Thomas Horne. Here he suffered exquisite misery for five years. "Even in old age," we read in his "Life," "he would say: 'The memory

of that place makes me shudder; it is repulsive to me even now."" His wretchedness, however, was not due in any way to the loss of home joys; for home, for him, did not mean what it means for most boys; for him it had none of the tender associations which it had for Macaulay. "His heart sank within him when the day came for him to go home for the holidays, and it sank within him when he had to return to school." At school he was underfed by the master, and bullied by the elder boys; at home he was neglected by his parents, and starved by the servants.

Young boys of the present generation may well be glad that their lot is happier than it would have been had they lived in bygone days. To leave home was, except in rare cases, misery enough; to be like a fish cast on dry land was bad enough; but when to these evils was added something akin to the terrors of the Spanish Inquisition, it is not a matter of wonder that many a man preserved a dismal memory of the proverbial "happiest time of his life." "No one who knew Lord Shaftesbury," his biographer tells us, "could fail to observe in him an air of melancholy, a certain sombreness and sadness, which habitually surrounded him like an atmosphere." This, we are told, was largely due to the fact (among other causes) that "there had been no lightheartedness in his childhood, and that the days to which most men look back with the keenest delight were only recalled by him with a shrinking sense of horror." In due time the boy grew to be a man, and to have sons of his own. It is interesting to read the entry in his diary the day before his eldest son, Antony-then a boy of twelve-was to leave home for school. "During many years I have passed every morning with him, hearing and reading the word of God. I cannot bear to part from him.. It seems to me almost incredible that I am about to surrender my Reuben to the care of a stranger! . . . All will now be left to a hireling': will

he care for the sheep?" In truth an anxious, loving father! He who himself had suffered so keenly as a boy is full of a tender-hearted sympathy for his own boy.

Everybody knows the timid, sensitive, gentle character of the poet Cowper. Who can tell how much of the morbid depression of the poet's later years was caused by the persecutions he had suffered when a boy at Dr. Pitman's, and afterwards at Westminster? He was a tender and delicate child, devotedly attached to his mother, who died when he was six years old, and whose memory he cherished all his life long with a fervour that was almost a religion. He was, from the first, physically and mentally unfit to stand the strain of public-school life. Often in later years he used to allude to the sorrows of his boyhood, with all its cruelties and persecutions. He said that when he was at Westminster he dared not raise his eye above the shoe-buckle of the elder boys, and that he could hardly describe the wretchedness of those days without a shudder.

So Lamb speaks of "the tyranny of the monitors" of Christ's Hospital. Nearly fifty years separated the boyhood of Charles Lamb from that of Cowper; but the tale is the same. "The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection." Thus Elia: "I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter nights-and this not once, but night after night-in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong." He tells of one petty Nero " who "actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red-hot iron."

Well, thank God, times are changed, and the "good old days" are past. There is less senseless brutality in school-life, there is more tenderness, if not more love, in the home-life. If on the one hand there is more to endear a boy to his home, there is less, far less, to make school a purgatory. Still, leaving home must be a painful wrench for a young and affection: theless it is oftentimes necessary for the

development and bracing of character. Pathemata mathemata, runs the old Greek jingle; and it is the law of our humanity that only by the discipline of pain-so long as the pain is not crushing and destructive of moral fibre-we can learn the highest lessons of life. It is through much tribulation that we enter in; and although, here and there, there will always be a boy whose nature is unfit for the stress of school-life away from home, and will flourish best under his father's roof, yet, for all but these few, leaving home and going to a good school is best. No doubt it is painful for the father to say-as it is for the son to hear him say—

My boy, the unwelcome hour is come

When thou, transplanted from thy genial home,
Must find a colder soil and bleaker air,

And trust for safety to a stranger's care.⚫

But, as John Stuart Mill said, "It is difficulties, not facilities, that nourish bodily and mental energy." The soil may be cold, the air bleak; but such conditions are just those most favourable to the production of independence, self-reliance, promptitude, and true manliness. Let but the boy remain faithful to the teachings and traditions of a good home, a little weeping will not matter. He that soweth in tears shall reap in joy.

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

GENERAL.

MISTRESSES in girls' schools and all teachers in mixed schools who are willing to assist an important scientific investigation should read the letter which Prof. Karl Pearson contributes to our correspondence columns this month. Prof. Pearson is a leader in the school of biologists that approaches problems of evolution from the statistical side, and it is an honour to be associated with him in the work he has in hand. He had already obtained from teachers in schools of various grades the particulars he requires as to the physical and mental characteristics of more than a thousand pairs of brothers. The discussion of the material thus obtained has led to the following definite conclusion, communicated to the Royal Society on November 21st:-"That the mental characters in man are inherited in precisely the same manner as the physical. Our mental and moral nature is, quite as much as our physical nature, the outcome of hereditary factors." What Prof. Pearson now requires are observations of the characteristics of pairs of sisters, or of brothers and sisters; and any of our readers who are prepared to undertake the simple measurements necessary for the purpose of comparison should communicate with Prof. Pearson at University College, London. The measurements and observations required are very simple, and can be made by teachers unfamiliar with scientific work, as well as by sciencemasters and mistresses. We trust that there will be a wide and ready response to Prof. Pearson's request for help; for we should not like it to be said that the investigation could not be completed satisfactorily because of the indifference of teachers to the subject of mental and physical characters of their pupils.

DR. H. E. ARMSTRONG, F. R.S., will be the president of the Educational Section of the British Association at the meeting to be held in Belfast on September 10 -17th, 1902.

REPLYING to a letter of Sir John Hibbert, expressing a fear that the schemes made by Education Committees to be constituted under the Education Bill of last session might operate to the detriment of non-local schools, the Duke of Devonshire points out that it "was not the intention of the framers of the Bill to confer on any local education authority,

by scheme or otherwise, any power of exercising control over or interfering with the affairs of any school, except those esta blished, maintained, or aided by the authority. In case of aid, a local authority would of course have power to attach conditions to the aid, but a school which did not receive aid would remain independent. This was the intention of the Bill, and I am advised that this was its effect." His Grace goes on to add : "I understand, however, that the governors of several of the non-local schools share the alarm expressed by the governing body of Shrewsbury School, and I should therefore be much obliged if you would kindly have this correspondence published. I will do my best to see that any doubt on this point is removed in any Bill for the same purpose which may be brought forward next Session."

THE great success which attended the conferences of science teachers held during the Christmas vacations of recent years has encouraged the London Technical Education Board to arrange another conference, which it is hoped will be attended by a very large number of teachers from elementary and secondary schools and technical institutes. The conference will be held on Thursday, January 9th, and Friday, January 10th, 1902, at the South-Western Polytechnic, Manresa Road, Chelsea, S.W. At the first meeting the chair will be taken by Mr. T. A. Organ. Addresses will be delivered by Miss Alice Ravenhill on the "Teaching of Hygiene," and by Dr. Francis Warner on "Mental School Hygiene.” The chairman of the second meeting will be Sir Henry E. Roscoe, F.R.S. Addresses will be delivered by Mr. Frank E. Beddard, F. R.S., on the "Teaching of Natural History," and by Professor W. B. Bottomley on the "Value of Natural History Collections for Teaching Purposes." Professor A. W. Rücker, F. R.S., Principal of the University of London, will take the chair at the morning meeting on Friday, January 10th. Addresses will be delivered by Mr. R. Hedger-Wallace on "American Systems of Nature Study," and by Mr. D. Houston on "Nature Study in Schools." At the fourth meeting the Countess of Warwick will take the chair, and addresses will be delivered by Mr. E. E. Hennesey on "Technical Education in Rural Secondary Schools," and by Prof. R. Meldola, F.R.S., on “ Pioneer Work in Secondary and Technical Education in Rural Districts." A collection of home-made apparatus for science teaching in schools will be on view during the days of the conference. The assistance of teachers who have designed such apparatus is specially desired, in order to make this section of the work as useful as possible. Packages of apparatus should be sent to Mr. H. B. Harper, at the South-Western Polytechnic, not later than Saturday, January 4th. Free admissions will be granted to as many teachers as the conference room will accommodate. Applications for tickets of admission should be made to Dr. Kimmins, Park Lodge, Harrow-on-the-Hill, or to Mr. C. A. Buckmaster, 16, Heathfield Road, Mill Hill Park, W.

WE are glad to note that the Civil Service Commissioners did not set the same type of French paper for admission to the Army last month. As our readers will remember, we protested last August against the dialogue pieces that have been set at the last three or four examinations; for they were not a fair test of a student's knowledge. This time a piece of verse and a piece of prose on La Fontaine were given to be translated into English, and the description of Cromwell's death from Green's "Short History" to be translated into French. The miscellaneous questions still leave much to be desired. If the Commissioners desire historical grammar to be learnt seriously, why do they not ask questions involving principles, and not derivations of words that the candidate may or may not have met ?-e.g., "Give the derivation of: tôt, encore, désor mais, chaise, denrée, lièvre, trou, heur, méchant, ennuyer.

There were no questions on French history, and the only two on literature were :-"State what you know of one of the following: Balzac, L'hotel de Rambouillet, La Fontaine, André Chénier." And: "Give the authors of the following works: Les Plaideurs, Horace, Les Précieuses ridicules, Le Lutrin, Les Lettres persanes, Paul et Virginie, Le Barbier de Séville." Why do not the Commissioners imitate the University of London at the Intermediate Arts Examination, and give one author to be learnt thoroughly each time, and not favour cram by skipping over the whole field of French literature?

LORD TENNYSON, the Governor of South Australia, has given, and has arranged to give annually, a gold, a silver, and a bronze medal, to be competed for by all the schools in South Australia, for the best set of answers in English literature in the lower, middle, and upper examinations held by the University

of Adelaide. We have been permitted to examine one of the medals, and have much pleasure in giving our readers an idea of its appearance by means of the accompanying reproduction in natural size. The head of the late Poet Laureate is shown in remarkably fine relief.

MANY teachers of geography will be glad to learn that lantern slides, illustrating Tasmania, can be loaned from the Office of the Agent-General for Tasmania, 5, Victoria Street, London, S.W. The slides are made up in complete sets of fifty each, and with each set a pamphlet is sent to assist the teacher in describing the country. The only cost to the borrower is the carriage on returning the slides. As some difficulty has been experienced in the past in allotting dates convenient to the applicants, it is requested that when making application applicants shall give as many dates as possible.

MR. ASQUITH, addressing a meeting at Oldham, on November 23rd, begged his hearers "not to be led astray by the captivating and fascinating cry of a single authority for all educational purposes." The composition and structure of local authorities will have to vary, Mr. Asquith thinks, according to the requirements of different localities and circumstances. It is possible to admit this and still to desire the single authority. Educationists as a body may be said to be agreed on the question of the desirability of a single authority for each district, and it is to be hoped that it will be the ideal towards which all politicians will work. The exigencies of practical politics may make it impossible to accomplish it at a single step, but there is no reason why the probable legislation of next session should not bring us substantially nearer to the "fascinating and captivating" end. The important matter is, Mr. Asquith rightly maintains-" the thing to get placed within reach of the people of this country is a regular, graduated scale from the bottom to the top, those means of developing their intellectual powers, of acquiring a specialised knowledge upon the foundation of a general education to carry on the great competition with the rest of the world." In other words, "Organise your secondary education"; and the most effectual way to do this seems to be to get good single local authorities to look after all grades of education.

WE have on previous occasions called attention to the admirable work of the Pupil Teachers' University Scholarship Committee, of which the Rev. Canon Barnett, Warden of Toynbee Hall, is the chairman. The ninth annual report of the Committee, now published, shows that the excellence of the scheme is being well maintained. The students sent to Oxford and Cambridge by the Committee have gained a higher proportion of honours than that of an ordinary public school. Out of thirteen men at Cambridge, ten have won sizarships or exhibitions which have enabled them to become members of colleges; while at Oxford, of fifteen Toynbee scholars, four are exhibitioners and four commoners of various colleges. At Cambridge two students in their fourth year and three in the third appeared in the Tripos lists. There is an increasing demand for the scholarships, and this year there is promise of a very large field of candidates. The Committee hopes that the funds at its disposal may make it possible to send up all who are worthy. An appeal is made, therefore, to those who are interested in the scheme to send a donation to the treasurer of the fund, the Rev. Canon Barnett, Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, and to use their influence with the Treasury to increase the grant to pupil teachers going to reside at Oxford or Cambridge.

IN connection with the courses of lectures established by the London Chamber of Commerce on the Machinery of Business, Col. H. M. Hozier, C. B., Secretary of Lloyds, has during December delivered two lectures on the "Insurance and Machinery of Lloyds." Mr. Charles Duguid, Financial Editor of the Westminster Gazette, will lecture on "How to Read the Money Article," on Thursdays, the 13th and 20th of February, 1902, at 6.30 p.m. Mr. C. Rozenraad will lecture at the same hour on the 20th and 27th of March, 1902, on "Foreign Exchanges." Admission to the lectures will be by ticket only. Students in the lectures and classes held at the offices of the London Chamber of Commerce will be admitted to the above lectures free of charge. Others desirous of attending these lectures should apply for tickets of admission to the manager of the Educational Department of the London Chamber of Commerce, 10, Eastcheap, E.C.

LORD REAY, Chairman of the London School Board, opened a new pupil teachers' school at Offord Road, Barnsbury, on December 7th. During the course of his address Lord Reay dealt with the future training of pupil teachers, and said he should like to see their whole time devoted to training, and the name of pupil teacher disappear from the Code. Unless the greater part of the pupil teacher's time is devoted to his own training, the result is damaging to himself and to the school in which he is employed. Sir Joshua Fitch, who seconded a vote of thanks to Lord Reay, does not, on the other hand, look forward to the abolition of the pupil teacher, and considers the apprenticeship system, under which the pupil teacher works, a perfectly sound one. Probably the wisest course for some time will be to give the young teacher sufficient time to become familiar with the art of teaching while ensuring him every opportunity to secure a good general education for himself.

THE lectures to be given next term in connection with the Oxford School of Geography will be of a varied and interesting kind. The Reader, Mr. Mackinder, will lecture weekly on "The Historical Geography of Europe." The Lecturer in Physical Geography, Mr. Dickson, promises weekly lectures on "Map Projections," "Climatic Regions of the Globe" and "Military Topography." Dr. Herbertson's subjects are "Regional Geography of Continental Europe," "British Isles' and "Types of Land Forms." Mr. Grundy takes a course in the "Topography of Greece in Relation to Herodotus and