dies, with the dampness, bad ventilation, want of personal or domestic cleanliness, and the retention of decaying matter in or about their dwellings, and the best means of avoiding these causes of disease.

D-With regard to personal health. The importance of personal cleanliness and the most convenient and cheap expedients for procuring it-the precautions to be taken in peculiar sedentary and indoor manufacturing employments for the preservation of health-the clothing appropriate to different forms of labour to the seasons, etc. -the importance of vaccination-the urgency of attending to premonitory symptoms of cholera and other contagious maladies. The permanent injury to health by the use of sleeping mixtures to secure quietness in children.

E-With regard to domestic comfort.-The uses of domestic order, neatness, convenience, and comfort; and with this view, a knowledge of the expedients which may be resorted to for washing, drying, etc., so as to occasion the least discomfort the economy of soap-the means of softening hard water, so as to adapt it for washing, and to save soap-the household arrangements at night required by decency, health, or good feeling-the economy and proper distribution of the wages of the working man, whereby his family may enjoy the fair share of his earnings, and the education of the children may be provided forsaving-banks-sick-clubs, etc.

II.-KNOWLEDGE OF MECHANIC AND LABOURER'S WORk.

A-Tools for hand use.—' -The various forms of those in general use such as the various planes, chisels, hatchets or adzes, hammers, files, picks, spades, mallets, saws, pincers, or tongs, shears, drills, punches.

B-The cutting edges of tools.—Such as the various planeirons, chisels, saws, gouges, shears the guide-principle in tools and its value-modes of compensating for its absence,

C- With regard to matters of household arrangement. Viz.-the common pump-the common clock-the gasmeter-the gas-pendant-the gas-cock-the gas-burnerthe bell-its cranks and wires--the common lock and latch

-

the forms of hinges and castors · the common scales both those for standing on a table and those for being suspended -the common bellows.

III..

-

EXPLANATION OF NATURAL PHENOMENA.

A-Stones and Rocks. What they are made of-the manner in which they have been formed the metals, etc. found in them petrified plants, shells, and bones the arrangement of rocks, or the places in which different kinds are found.

B-Animals and Plants.-The kinds of animals-those with bones and limbs those with hard skins and limbsthose with shells. -those with soft bodies - animals invisible to the naked eye animals that live upon animal food-animals that live upon vegetable food plants with flowers-plants without flowers-the parts of flowers-the kinds of trees-plants and animals used for food by man. C- The Weather. The four seasons - trade windschanging winds-revolving storms and whirlwinds - land and sea breezes - rain - hail- mists and

--

snow

ice

D-Natural Geography.-The ocean-ocean currentstides and their variations in different parts of the worldrivers - lakes - volcanoes-earthquakes - glaciers and icebergs-wasting powers of the sea - rivers and glaciers

on the land.

E-The Stars.-The sun and its planets-the year leap-year and months-the changes of the moon ---- - comets meteors-fixed stars.

GEOLOGY.

There are many interesting facts in Geology, particularly such as apply to the locality in which a school is situated, or which have reference to agriculture, to which attention might be called.

Boys may be easily made to understand what is meant by stratified and unstratified rocks; that the order of superposition of the different strata is found to be the same in every country, and in every part of the globe; and there

are a few leading features which might be mentioned, without going into detail, as to the fossils that distinguish one set of beds or one formation from another such as where a stratum is found to abound in fossils of a marine character — animals that must have lived in the sea — that these denote a submarine formation;—that one abounding with those of a fresh-water character denotes a fresh-water formation;—and, having formed an idea of the order in which the different strata rests one upon another, to notice the strata which prevail in their own neighbourhood — for instance in this part of Hampshire - the chalk that this is divided into two, the upper and the lower-the one containing flints, the other without flints - the soil resting on the upper part not so good for arable purposes as for pasturage that on the lower chalk partaking of the character of a good soil, and being of a marly nature, is better for the purposes of agriculture.

These nodules of flint when broken, will many of them appear inside of a spongy or porous texture, and the chalk being a submarine formation, they are supposed to have been formed by a deposit of the siliceous matter in seawater around the sponge, the substance of which gradually going away has been replaced by this flinty deposit.

That the unstratified rocks form hills, mountain-chains, etc., often one mass of the same material, as granite - that the stratified rocks rest upon the other, but that the hills of granite have been upheaved through these stratified rocks, as is shown, by laying bare the strata, where they rest on the mountain sides.

That the mineral ingredients of a soil partake very much of the character of the rocks in the neighbourhood, and of those on which they are superposed; if, in digging through the surface-bed of soil, we come at chalk as the prevailing substratum, the soil itself when analysed, would be found to contain a great deal of this substance - if a limestone,

it would be of a calcareous nature, etc.

Of the nature of this degradation and crumbling away, it would be easy to refer to instances in almost any neighbourhood-such as chalk cliffs, limestone rocks, deep pits, etc.-how the atmosphere is the chief agent in this -- by

the action of heat and cold- of frost and thaw, etc. Thus the depth, etc., of soil will depend much on the rock being easily decomposed, or of a soft nature.

Then, again, the practical purposes to which a knowledge of this superposition of the different strata may be turned. If they come in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and you live upon No. 2, it is of no use attempting to find No. 1 below it, or No. 2 below No. 3-to point out the use of this knowledge in boring for water-in looking for beds of coal-and in all mining purposes-the needless and immense expenditure of money which a want of this knowledge has sometimes led to.

The alluvial deposits at the mouths of rivers, in cases where the sea has receded, will be found containing a soil which has been transported from great distances, as the annual overflowing of the Nile, the Ganges, etc. These gradually deposit an accumulation of soil over large extents of country; and although this soil may differ from the character of the rocks in the neigbourhood, yet the fact, when inquired into, admits of easy explanation by the geologist.

From what has been said on the absorption and radiation of heat in some of the preceding pages, it will easily be seen that the degree of warmth which a soil will acquire from the sun's heat will depend very much upon its nature, and this will again very materially affect the vegetation. Professor Johnston says, that when the temperature of the air in the shade is no higher than 60° or 70°, a dry soil may become so warm as to raise the thermometer to 90° or 100°. The temperature in wet soils rises more slowly, and never attains the same height as in dry by 10° or 15°. Hence, wet soils are called cold, evaporation causing it. This is to corrected by draining. Dry sands and clays, and blackish garden mould become warmed to nearly an equal degree under the same sun; brownish-red soils are heated somewhat more, and dark-coloured heat the most of all."

The farmer, hitherto, never seems to have thought much about the analysis of soils; but it is one deserving of great

attention, and can only be done by those who are well skilled in this department of chemistry, and can pay great attention to it.

are found slate, tin, lead, copper

--

A geological map of England, on a tolerably large scale, pointing out the extent of country over which any particular formation extends—whether chalk, red sandstone, etc.; also the coal fields-districts where the iron and other ores and this coloured for the purpose, with references at the side, is a most useful piece of school-apparatus ;- it not only gives a teacher an opportunity of pointing out where those minerals are to be found how they affect the agriculture of a district — the character of its population and their employments-attracting an agricultural or a manufacturing class-but the children get a great deal of information by examining the map themselves. I have very often found a boy answering questions on this subject, of which I had no notion that he had any idea, and have found that he had got at the knowledge himself, from the inspection of a geological map on the walls of the room.

There are many things of an ordinary STATISTICAL kind, connected with our social economy, our manufactures, etc., which might be made subjects of useful lessons to the boys in a school; such as the population of the different parts of the United Kingdom at periods when a census has been taken the decimal increase, the average annual increase, and this whether greater in the manufacturing or agricultural districts—the average number to a house, in 1831, in Great Britain, 5.62, in 1841, 5·44, so that, at the latter period, these would seem to have been an increase of houses in a greater ratio than the increase of population.

The average consumption of each person in some of the common articles of life would also be interesting, as affording ideas of a definite kind as to the average consumption of a family in a village, a town, a county, etc.