and successfully tested. Now, the same material has been utilized for making pipes, and a certain quantity of such pipes have been exhibited in Vienna. The process is as follows: Strips of paper, the width of which corresponds with the length of one pipe section, are drawn through melted asphalt, and wound upon a mandrel. When the pipe thus made has cooled, the mandrel is withdrawn, and the inside is covered with a kind of enamel, the nature of which comprises the main secret of the invention, and is therefore not made known. The outside is painted with asphalt varnish and dusted over with sand. It is stated that such a pipe will resist some 2,000 pounds internal pressure, though the thickness of the stuff is only about onehalf inch.-The Universal Engineer.

RESTORATION OF OLD PARCHMENTS.-A valuable discovery has been made, whereby the faded ink on old parchments may be so restored as to render the writing perfectly legible. The process consists in moistening the paper with water, and then passing over the lines in writing a brush which has been wet in a solution of ammonia. The writing will immediately appear quite dark in color; and this color, in the case of parchment, it will preserve. On paper, however, the color gradually fades again; but it may be restored at pleasure by the application of the sulphide. The explanation of the action of this substance is very simple. The iron which enters into the composition of the ink is transformed by the reaction into the black sulphide.—Electrical Review.

NOTES.-The American Climatological Association held its meeting at Philadelphia lately.. -The International Philomathic Congress will be held September 20, 1886.-The U. S. coast survey has issued a new chart of Humboldt Bay, made from the most recent surveys.— -It has been proved by experiments made by H. Fell and E. Sarase that the oblique rays of the sun have great power to reach great depths.- -Professor J. Emerich has discovered the aerolite which fell in Washington county, Pennsylvania, September 14, 1885. It is said to weigh 200 tons.The following comprise the recent changes in the coast survey service: Parties on the Pacific coast have all taken the field under instructions. Professor Davidson is at Portland, Ore., observing for telegraphic longitude, while Assistant Pratt is at Tatoosh Island, which point is made available as a telegraphic longitude station, from the fact that the U. S. signal service now has wires in operation from Port Angeles to that point. Assisstant Whiting takes the field about June 1, in Massachusetts, to determine the changes at Cotamay, Martha's Vineyard. Assistants Smith and St. Clair are between Colorado Springs and Salt Lake City, engaged in telegraphic longitude determination. Parties in the South will shortly be closing their season's work, and will report to the Washington office for future field duty. The geographical positions of the Borden survey of the State of Massachusetts, together with a great number of additional points determined by the coast and geodetic survey, computed upon Clark's spheroid, are ready for publication in the annual report for 1885.—The dredging machinery for the excavation of the Panama canal is exceedingly powerful. One of the dredges excavates 3,300 cubic metres per day, and there are two others which excavate 800 and 1,000 cubic metres. Besides these, there are a number of smaller ones in operation, in all, capable of excavating 37,000 cubic metres per day. It is reported that during the month of February upwards of 1,100,000 cubic metres were excavated.

MEDICAL.

A CHILD WOMAN.-The recent death of Miss Caroline Terboss has attracted renewed interest in her remarkable case. She was a member of an otherwise normally developed family, and up to her twelfth year she was apparently like other girls. But at that age she suddenly stopped growing, and though she lived to the advanced age of seventy-seven, development, once interrupted, was never resumed. At the time of her death, she was in form, statue, and organization a child. For many years she was a familiar figure on Fifth avenue, in the neighborhood of the reservoir. Her age was a mystery, for her hair remained unchanged in color, and her face, though noticeably mature for so young a figure, was but slightly wrinkled. Beyond an extreme sensitiveness of the skin, she enjoyed apparently good health until within a short time of her death. Her height is given at but four feet and four inches. She is stated to have been remarkably quick intellectually. As no physician had been in attendance within twenty-four hours of death, it was necessary to summon the coroner. The autopsy revealed the perfectly formed body of an apparent girl of eleven. Beyond certain organic peculiarities, the anatomy was normal. The spine was straight, and there was no outward deformity. No examination was made of the brain. The case attracts much interest among physicians, because, though similar instances have been recorded, they are very rare, and never has the subject lived to so advanced an age. Death has usually occurred before twenty-one. Twenty-five years of age is believed to have been the extreme limit-Scientific American.

THE USE OF MALT LIQUORS IN FUNCTIONAL DISTURBANCE OF THE HEART.Dr. Charlton R. Gulick sends us an account of the case of a man who, after an attack of measles, had acute lobar pneumonia, for which he was not treated. This in turn was followed by severe bronchitis, and Dr. Gulick was called in. The patient did well under treatment; little if any pleuritic thickening was left, and no organic disease of the heart was to be discovered, but he began to suffer with palpitation of great severity and persistency, which proved very refractory to treatment. Electricity was first used, then quinine, and then digitalis. The use of the drugs was pushed to the fullest extent, and finally Duquesnel's digitalin was used hypodermically, but this proved exceedingly objectionable to the patient, and lager beer was ordered. Within seventy-two hours marked improvement was observed. At first the improvement was imputed to the use of the drugs, but the question was tested by withholding the beer and continuing the use of the medicines. Within three days the palpitation returned in all its original severity, but was again

removed, never to return, by suspending all medication except the use of the beer. There was no gastric disorder in the case. Dr. Gulick commends the use of lager beer in rebellious cases of functional derangement of the heart.-Medical Journal. TOBACCO BLINDNESS.-Tobacco blindness is becoming a common affliction. At present there are several persons under treatment for it at one London hospital. It first takes the form of color blindness, the sufferers who have smoked themselves into this condition being quite unable to distinguish the color of a piece of red cloth held up before them. Sometimes the victim loses his sight altogether. Although smoking is to a large extent the cause of the malady, heavy drinking is also partly responsible.—Scientific American.

NOTES. It is said that a pure negro never died of phthisis before the war; now deaths from phthisis among the blacks is four times as great as among the whites, concerning which Dr. Tipton, of Selma, Ala., says: "This change has come, in my opinion, as the result of the violent striking of the shackles from the hands of a people who for generations had lived as slaves; the sudden lifting of all restraint, the violent swing of the pendulum from a simple life of toil and bondage to one of liberty, license, and all that inevitable brood of disasters that follows surely and swiftly upon the heels of outraged and violated natural laws."Sir Wm. Jenner has been re-elected to the presidency of the Royal College of Physicians, London, after holding the office for over five years—a most unusual Occurrence.- -The medical department of the University of the City of New York has been presented with the sum of $100,000, to be devoted to the building and maintenance of a laboratory, to be known as the Loomis Laboratory; name of the donor is not to be make known for the present.- -Dr. Rauch, of the Illinois State Board of Health, says that vital registration in the United States is in a less satisfactory condition than in any. other civilized country.- The Governor of New York has vetoed an appropriation made by the Legislature to enable the Medical Board of the State from doing necessary work.- -A member of the Board of Regents is about to build a laboratory for the Long Island College Hospital. It is to contain a library and a museum. A man in Boston has been abusing the privileges of the hospital. He occupied a free bed for several months, and his tenants went to him semi-monthly on visiting days to pay him rent for the tenements in which they lived.- --The Oregon State Medical Society holds its annual meetings June 8, 9, and 10.- -The Lancet states that Prof. Vogel, of Dorpat, is about to resign on account of ill health, but will continue in private practice; that Dr. F. Penzoldt, extraordinary professor of pharmacology at Erlangen, has been appointed to the professorship; that Prof. Kussmaul, of Strassburg, is said to contemplate resigning and moving to Heidelberg; and that Prof. Spath, of Vienna, has applied for his pension.. Progres Medical says that Dr. Eversbuch, of Munich, has been nominated professor of Opthalmology at Erlangen; that Prof. F. A. Hoffmann, of Dorpat, is proposed as Prof. Strumpell's successor at the Leipsic Poliklinik; that Dr. Haab, of Zurich, has been nominated as Prof. Horner's successor in the chair of ophthalmology at Zurich; that Prof. Frohner has been called from the Veterinary School of Stuttgart to that of Berlin, in which latter school Prof. Schutz has been designated to conduct a series of courses in bacteriology, of fourteen days each; that Dr. Bohr has succeeded the late Prof. Panum at the University of Copenhagen; and that Dr. U. Pritchard has been chosen to fill the newly-established chair of otology at King's College, London.The profession complains that it is overcrowded.- -The Boston Medical School circles are at present agitated over the question whether the female medical students shall be allowed to attend the general surgical clinics in the city hospital, they having insisted upon that privilege by attending and refusing to withdraw. -One of the oldest, if not the oldest medical colleges of the world is the Medical School of the Imperial University of Japan.

FINANCE AND COMMERCE.

THE BUSINESS OUTLOOK.- -During the past week the business situation has improved considerably. This is due to the fact that the situation of affairs in regard to labor troubles is steadily improving. The industrial situation has materially improved. Two weeks since more than 125,000 employes were on strikes. Now the number does not exceed 50,000. Better than this decline in the army of the idle, there is a prevailing sentiment that, for the present, the labor troubles are practically at an end, and that the employers of labor may proceed to undertake new enterprises with confidence. In many cases employes have returned to labor without change of wages or hours, while in many others there have been adjustments with concessions by employers. The continued favorable reports of the condition of crop staples have also had a tendency to cause a better feeling in business circles. It will be some time before the confidence which pervaded business circles last March will be restored, but the drift of things is now decidedly hopeful --much more so than the most sanguine would have dared to predict two or three weeks since. One of the most important features of the present time is the increase of railroad building, which is now being prosecuted on an extensive scale. This work is undertaken by the larger companies in the West. During the past week the St. Paul Company has contracted with a syndicate of American and foreign bankers to place $6,000,000 of new bonds on the market. These enterprises account for the favorable reports regarding the iron trade. With promising crops, a sound money market and the resumption of industry why should not an early return of confidence and consequent business activity be counted on?-Boston Journal, May 24.

DEPRECIATION OF CATTLE RANGES.-Mr. Denman, of Colorado, who is sufficiently interested in cattle-raising to watch it closely, but not enough to bias his judgment, said to me: "The lettings by the Government have shown that the tendency of the price of range cattle is downward. It has gone down 20 per

cent. in a month and 50 per cent. in three years. You can see something of the depreciation of the last year by comparison of prices. The lowest bid of a year ago on the 10,000,000 pounds of beef required for the Indian Territory was $3.17 per hundred. This year it was $2.64. These figures illustrate the depreciation of value better than anything that can be said. The same proportion holds good in the Sioux country. The conditions of cattle-raising have been rapidly changing all through the great stretch of country from the British Columbia region to the Gulf of Mexico. Formerly out of every hundred head of cattle fed on the ranges 75 per cent. could be fattened on the grasses of the plains. Now not over 30 per cent. can be so fattened. The change has been climatic. The extension of railroads, the settlement of the country, and various causes that possibly we do not fully understand have brought rain in the fall and winter, and not in the spring, over most of this country. When the rainfall is in the spring it maks the grass crop perfect. When the rainfall is in the fall it rots the grass and there is not enough good grass for the cattle. The poorer quality of the beef is one reason for the tendency of the price of beef downward. It may go up, but I think that with Colonel Hunter and some other sanguine gentlemen the wish is father to the thought."

COTTON IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA.-English capital and skill is developing manufactures in Southern Russia, especially those of cotton, iron and steel. The hours of work are eighty per week. The Russian workman gets 30 per cent. less wages for his eighty hours than the workman in England for his fifty-four hours, and works with English machinery run at full speed. Consequently prints and calicoes are produced at less than English prices, and obtain preference in many of the Central Asian markets. Cotton is being successfully and extensively grown in Southern Russia. A writer to the Manchester Guardian says: "I have seen and used cotton grown in Russia from American seed equal to this year's American crop." For fuel they have coal and wood and mineral oil in abundance, good oil costing about 85 cents per pood, a measure of thirty-six pounds. Such competition as Russia can give is troubling manufacturers in western Europe. They will compete more severely with American manufacturers. In view of such conditions it appears puerile to talk of securing foreign markets for American manufactures, except a few specialties, as long as the cost of production in this country is kept up as at present. Galveston News.

MUSIC.

SALE OF MUSICIANS' AUTOGRAPHS —At a recent sale of autographs held at Berlin, the following from the pens of celebrated musicians were among the most noteworthy. The prices realized on this occasion, although of course regulated in a great measure by the intrinsic importance attaching to the respective manuscripts, may also serve as a kind of barometer of the ever-changing popular estimation of genius. Thus the sum of $75 was paid for three songs by Schubert, while two minutes (as yet unpublished) from the hand of Mozart, scored for a small orchestra, fetched $62.50. A setting for male chorus of Goethe's weird verses "Im Nebelgereisel" (the gypsy song in "Götz von Berlichingen") from the pen of Mendelssohn, dedicated to the violinist Edward Reitz, and likewise unpublished, was knocked down for $37.50. Wagner figured in the catalogue with a sketch of the first scene of "Rienzi," dated Riga, August 7, 1838, and with a letter written to Capellmeister Reissiger, of Dresden, dated July 3, 1848, and another to Bülow, without date, which realized $26.50, $18.50, and $10.50, respectively. The complete manuscript of Weber's overture entitled "The Ruler of the Spirits," dated November 8, 1811, was sold for $75, and a letter by the same composer directed to a friend was sold for $20.50-Musical Courier.

Three little bulls on wheat are we,

Sick as a bull can ever be;

Filled to the brim with nauseous glee

Three little bulls on wheat.

Every time it goes down we run.
The call for margin has just begun.
No pleasure whatever under the sun
For three little bulls on wheat.

PAGANINI.-Paganini once played before the Princess Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon I, when his chanterelle (the E string) snapped. Whether by accident or his own design, the A broke after this, and he played so wonderfully on the two remaining strings a duet between two lovers that the Princess said to him: You do such incredible things, M. Paganini, with two strings, that I am almost sorry that the D string didn't give way too, so as to leave you only one string. I should like to see what it is possible even for a sorcerer like you to do on the G alone." Qu'à cela ne tienne," said Paganini, with the greatest equanimity, and he coolly took the D off and began his famous variations on the Prayer of Mosè on the Galone. It is useless to try and give a description of the amazement, not to say stupefaction, of his hearers at this unparalleled feat, and of the admiration which followed the first surprise, when they saw what a man's hand could do with one string. The Jewish Messenger.

NOTES.-A comic operetta entitled "Two Cole Roses," founded on Les Charbonniers, has been written by Messrs. Houghton and Clifton.- -The most important musical festival ever attempted in Canada is announced for 15th, 16th and 17th of June, at Toronto; the guarantee fund amounts to $20,000.- The musical season at Boston has been highly satisfactory, although Patti and others of her class have not been there.- -Mr. Gericke is becoming very popular as a conductor.A novelty is expected from England next season.- The Musical Festival at Cincinnati has been a magnificent success.- -The American Opera Company gave four performances at Baltimore and lost $12,000. Musical critics say this is due to the Peabody Conservatory of Music, an institution where charlantism instead of art reigns.- -The Grand Duke has disbanded the Meiringen Orchestra.Three hundred Spanish ladies addressed the following letter to the manager of the Royal Opera House, Madrid: "We, the undersigned, members of Madrid's best society and respectable ladies, herewith declare that we consider the sixty-five years' old, small and ugly Mr. Sylvio an incredible, nay, an absolutely impossible Don Giovanni for any lady spectator with a half-ways acceptable opera-glass. Let him sing Rigoletto or Amonasro, but as Don Giovanni we will not have him." The director, to satisfy his fair petitioners, is now looking for a baritone of youthful and Adonis-like appearance. -Italian artists seem just now to be all over the world, viz: Borghi-Mamo is in Lisbon, Emma Dotti in Milan, Damerini in Florence, Marie Durand in Florence, Gerster in Bologna, Kuffer-Berger in Barcelona, Caterina Marco in New York, Pinner-Berseni in New York, Paolina Rossini in Milan, Ella Russell in Berlin, Sembrich in Dresden, Scalchi in Lisbon, Tremelli in Vienna, Campanini in Milan, Frapolli in Rome, Massini in Milan, Gayarre in Paris, Tamagno in Lisbon, Mierzwinski in Paris, Petrarch in Milan, Stagno in Buenos Ayres, Ciampi-Cellaj in Barcelona, Kaschman in Rome, Panteleoni in Udine, Storli in Milan, Antonucci in Naples, Castelmary in Paris, Galassi in Milan, Tamburlini in Buenos Ayres, Bevignani, the conductor, in London.---Mme. Marcella Sembrich is not only a very fair artiste, but also a very generous lady. She has just presented the Conservatory of Music, of Lemberg, where she made her first musical studies, with a check of 2,000 florins, and has given to the poor of her native town, Krakow, the respectable sum of 4,000 florins.- -At the house No. 26 Rue Laval, Paris, in which Victor Massé, the French composer, passed the last ten years of his life and in which occurred also his death, the municipality of Paris will affix a memorial tablet.-Joseph Joachim, the great violinist, has just been decorated by the Emperor of Austria with the order of the Iron Crown.- -Mme. Materna has returned to Vienna from a successful tournée. She sings there this month the parts of Brunhilde and Isolde.- -Camillo Sivori, the celebrated violin virtuoso, though now seventy years of age, is still concertizing and, according to the latest reports from Naples, with unqualified success.- -Through the kindness and generosity of Mr. Higginson 2,500 school children of Boston heard the Symphony orchestra last Saturday afternoon in a delightful programme.- -Two celebrated concert-masters celebrated on the 1st inst. their twenty-fifth anniversary of their officiating in that capacity. They are Johann Christoph Lauterbach, of the Dresden, and Edmund Singer, of the Stuttgart orchestra.- -The American Opera -Emma Abbot has been Company's receipts at St. Louis amounted to $30,000.severely criticised for singing "Home, Sweet Home" in the opera of "Linda of Chamouin." To which she replies: "As regards the singing of Home, Sweet Home' in Linda' I may state that it has always been sung in this opera, both at the Royal Italian opera house in London and in this country by all of the greatest singers who have appeared in Linda' for many years past, and as an evidence of this statement I can cite the names of Patti, Gerster and Sembaich, all of whom -Mr. Geo. D. Scott, have invariably sung Home, Sweet Home' in Linda."".

of Washington, and Mr. T. F. McNulty, of Baltimore, intend to make a tour of seaside resorts this summer for the purpose of giving parlor concerts,

EDUCATIONAL.

MANUAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC EDUCATION.

THE editor of the Journal of Education has solicited opinions from representative pedagogues on the important question of manual training in public instruction. The pith of the opinions will be found below:

I BELIEVE that manual training should enter into the education of every child, and I further believe that this part of education can be managed more successfully and economically at school than anywhere else. Moreover, I think that it is in the interest of those educational features already in school education to incorporate the manual elements with them. Hence, I must conclude that manual training should be given in public schools. The value of manual training, when properly combined wilh literary, scientific, and mathematical studies, will be shown in various ways: I. Science and mathematics will profit from a better understanding of forms, materials, and processes, and from the readiness with which their principles may be illustrated. 2. Without shop work drawing loses half its value. 3. Correct notions of things, relations, and forces derived from actual handling and doing go far toward a just comprehension of language in general; that is, manual training cultivates the mechanical and scientific imagination, and enables one to see the force of metaphors in which physical terms are employed to express metaphysical truths. 4. Manual training will stimulate a love for simplicity of statement, and a disposition to reject fine-sounding words whose meaning is obscure. 5. It will awaken a lively interest in school, and invest dull subjects with new life. 6. It will keep boys and girls out of mischief, both in and out of school. will keep boys longer at school. 8. It will give boys with strong mechanical aptitudes and fondness for objective study an equal chance with those of good memories for language. 9. It will materially aid in the selection of occupations when. school life is over. 10. It will enable an employer of labor to better estimate the comparative value of unskilled and skilled labor, and to exercise a higher consideration for the laboring man. II. It will raise the standards of attainments in mechanical occupations, and invest them with new dignity and worth. 12. It will increase the bread-winning and home-making power of the average boy, who has his bread to win and his home to make. 13. It will stimulate invention. The age of invention is yet to come, and manual training is the very breath of its nostrils. 14. We shall enjoy the extraordinary advantage of having lawyers, journalists, and politicians with more correct views of social and national conditions and problems.-C. M. Woodward, Manual Training School, Washington Univ., St. Louis.

7. It

In answer to your inquiry permit me to say that to my mind instruction in sewing for the girls, and in the use of mechanics' tools for the boys, is a most useful line of work for public schools to undertake. It is simply an extension of that object-teaching which already characterizes the most interesting and profitable portions of our school work. For example, the gifts of the kindergarten; the primary modeling in clay; the concrete portions of arithmetic; the model and geometric drawing; natural philosophy and chemistry-as taught by experiment; the collection of cabinets interesting to the student of history and geography, etc. The training of the eye and the hand in an industrial way affords good mental discipline, and invigorates, by practical application, much of the otherwise lifeless information gained from books. While, of course, it is not possible to give in the common schools sufficient industrial training for any trade, it is believed to be feasible to give, without interruption of the present course, such a command of the common wood and iron-working tools as shall reveal to a pupil any latent mechanical skill he may have, and shall prove, in some cases, an acceptible substitute for the experience formerly gained under the apprenticeship system. Two hours a week of attendance at the shop should be required of all able-bodied boys, not merely of the bright ones, until at least they have acquired a minimum of proficiency in the use of certain prescribed tools. The instructor should be a skillful carpenter; intelligent, and capable of expressing himself clearly. The shop should not be located in a half-lighted, damp basement. The aim, of course, is not to make salable articles; but, judging from the specimens seen in the schools at New Haven, Boston, and elsewhere, many boys display the power early to turn out surprisingly fine work. The spirit of our institutions forbids us to forecast the lifework of any lad; but whatever it may be, a knowledge of materials, with dexterity in the use of tools, can never come amiss; and it may serve to counteract the present morbid tendency to regard manual labor as in some way discreditable.-Geo. A. Littlefield, Superintendent of Schools, Newport, R. I.

THOSE Who oppose hand-work in the school are apt to argue persistently, as though the object proposed were to make artisans, or, at least, those who can use their acquired skill, either for pecuniary profit or for pleasure. And it must be admitted that they are not entirely fighting a man of straw; for not a few of those who favor the branch have taken no high view of education in general, and have dwelt chiefly on the utilitarian side. They are like those who make the hope of reward and the fear of punishment the chief incitements to virtue. And it is really creditable to the average sense of mankind that these lower arguments have not been allowed to carry the day. But the most rational and earnest advocates of hand-work as a factor in education, and the men who have the closest acquaintance with the subject, contend for such studies and pursuits in school as will best tend to develop the whole man, always bearing in mind that we have bodily, as well as intellectual powers, and that our ideas come largely through the medium of trained or untrained senses. Vagueness of sensual impressions is hardly compatible with exactness of thought. Hence the desire is not to train the mind alone or the hand alone, but to bring about the full co-operation of both. It is interesting to note the improved tone of later European writers who have visited Sweden and studied the working of the Naas system, in which hand-work is most

strongly insisted on as an important agent in formal rather than special development. The true theory is gradually making its way into men's minds, and only so far as it exerts a controlling influence can we hope to see a healthy growth of the newer education.-John M. Ordway, Tulane University of Louisiana.

י

THE public school should seek intellectual culture as a means, not as an end. The public school is a State institution; its object the highest development of the State through the highest development of the individual. To tax Mr. A for the education of Mr. B's children on any other ground than public necessity is downright robbery. The stability and progress of the State is the only tenable plea for the existence of the public school, whose product should be the good citizen. The strength of the State is to be found in its industrious, moral, law-upholding citizens. Our public-school system has developed neither the desire nor the ability to labor with the hands. Skilled workmen are imported as are other valuable articles; not produced under our sky or by our institutions. The State has for years assumed the functions of providing a "practical education" '—a means of self-support-for the few; why not for the many? Schools of law, of medicine, of civil and mechanical and mining engineering, are supported wholly or partly at public expense. Should the public school teach trades? No; although the schools named above are professional schools. But give the boy a general manual training as we do a general mental training. Give him the correct theory and use of the few tools— there are but seven-which underlie all skilled labor, and, with a few mechanical principles, all machinery. Cultivate his perception and his judgment, and you have fitted him for that mechanical occupation in life (if he is to be a mechanic) which will best suit his native ability, his tastes, and his environment.-H. H. Belfield, Director Chicago Manual Training School.

THAT an industrial people should receive an education and training befitting their needs and prospects is a self-evident proposition. That our traditional system of instruction accomplishes this result will scarcely be claimed by any close observer of our common schools, or of their outcome as represented by the average boys and girls that graduate therefrom. That manual training, intelligently and thoroughly applied, will result in a more fully rounded, symmetrical development, and that it will go far toward determining the aptitudes of the child for his true vocation in life, there seems to be no rational doubt. But is manual training in the common schools practicable? I have no doubt of it. With intelligent, skillful teachers and superintendents, with kindergarten, normal, and art schools to lead the way, and with a rapidly accumulating literature devoted to this speacial feature, there is no creditable reason why manual training should not become a universal fact at an early day. The instincts and tastes of the child are so marked in this direction that, once wisely begun, it will grow on its own intrinsic merits. This opinion is the result concurrently of reason and experience.- Wm. F. Phelps, Secretary St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul, Minn.

THERE surely is need for industrial training in our common schools. They now prepare students for the university where these-frequently, again, largely at public cost become physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, journalists, leaders of men. The high schools have been opened, too, to business courses which prepare young people for the counting-houses, and to normal training courses for young teachers. Agricultural colleges, largely at public expense, educate farmers. Under these circumstances it seems strange that, in a distinctively industrial age, and among a people that owes so much to industrialism, and relies so much upon the resources of industrialism, the propriety of making provisions for indústrial training in the common schools should still be a matter of discussion.-W. N. Hailmann, Supt. of Schools, La Porte, Ind.

MANUAL training is an important element in education, but it is not, and never can be, "the philosopher's stone in education," nor "the incarnation of the dream of the alchemist," as some of its zealous advocates have claimed. The whole boy goes to school with all his might of feeling and will not his eye and hand alone. The public school is for the "all around" training of the child, so far as it has the control of his education. It is mind that rules the world of matter and the world of mind. The whole man is to be trained physically and mentally. The things to be sought in physical training are health, strength and beauty, and the ability to maintain them.-Albert G. Boyden, A. M., Principal of the State Normal School, Bridgewater, Mass.

I SHOULD move very cautiously in the matter. We must recollect that the child has many teachers besides those in the school-house; and it is incumbent on the school only to do what it alone can do to the best advantage for the greatest number of the children of the State.—Wm. Preston Johnston, President of Tulane University of Louisiana, New Orleans.

RAILROADS.

RAILWAYS IN CANADA.-At the close of the last fiscal year there were 10,773 miles of track laid on railways in Canada, and 10,150 miles of road in operation. Considerably more than one-half of this mileage is under the control of two companies, the Canadian Pacific, with a system of 3,950 miles, and the Grand Trunk, with a system of 2,591 miles, next to which in point of length ranks the Intercolonial, with 861 miles. The amount of capital that has been paid up for the construction of the various roads reaches the large total of $454,082,500, or about $42,000 a mile, besides which government bonuses of $119,603,200, loans of $39,596,400 and municipal aid of $12,472,400 have been given, making in all an expenditure of $625,754,500 on the railways of Canada, or more than $60,000 per mile. The earnings of the fiscal year 1885 are reported to have reached $32,227,470, and the working expenses $24,015,350, which would leave a net profit of $8,212,118, or less than two per cent. on the paid-up capital, and a little more than one per cent. on the investment, a result that is not very cheering to the ordinary