and systematized the language teaching, has developed at the institute a course of instruction in pedagogy and school management, has promoted the use of the district libraries, and by his annual exhibit has succeeded in developing interest and practical work in manual training. We copy from the report the following paragraph regarding the course of study for schools of two or three departments: "I have changed the course of study for graded schools. These schools, besides teaching the common branches are to teach in addition Elementary Algebra, so much of Physical Geography as is contained in Gieke's Primer of Physical Geography, as much Geometry as is contained in Hunt's Concrete Geometry for Grammar Grades, and the teaching of Nature Lessons is to be extended by using Avery-Sinnott's First Lessons in Physical Science or Gifford's Teacher's Edition of Elementary Lessons in Physics as a basis. Business Forms and Business Accounts are to be taught in connection with Arithmetic."

-The N. E. A. Committee of Libraries and Schools is getting on with its report for next July. Supt. Sherman Williams, of Glens Falls, N. Y.: List of books to be recommended for pupils in grades 1 to 12 with special reference to the average country school teacher and the average grade teacher. Mr. Williams is also to consider and report on the subject of the use of books and libraries in grammar grades throughout the country. F. A. Hutchins, Secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Madison, Wis.: The relations existing between libraries and school in the country districts and country towns of the United States. Mr. Hutchins will also prepare a brief outline which may help a country or village teacher to improve her local library, or to organize a library in a country district if one does not exist. Prof. M. Louise Jones, State Normal School, Emporia, Kan.: The work of normal schools throughout the country (with special reference to a few typical schools) in familiarizing their pupils with the use of books in the schoolroom, the organizing and forming of a library in a small community, the selection of books, etc. Prof. Charles McMurray, State Normal, Normal, Ill. : Books and libraries in grades 1 to 4 in the country generally. This it is understood covers the whole field, not simply of the use of books in connection with study in the schoolroom, but the beginnings of children's reading in every department in school and at home. J. C. Dana, Librarian, City Library, Springfield, Mass.: The attitude of libraries towards schools and the promotion of the right kind of feeling on the part of the

librarian towards the teachers, with special reference to a few typical libraries.

-We copy with satisfaction the following paragraph from the report of Sup't Peterson, of Polk county, because it indicates a movement which we feel sure might be with advantage introduced into every county in the state: "I venture to suggest one way in which we may advance our schools. The schools should be graded or classified into first, second, and third grade or class schools. No teacher should be allowed to teach in a school of higher grade than the certificate he or she holds. The teachers holding the first grade certificate could teach in any school in the county. The teachers holding the second grade certificate could teach in the second and third grade schools, and the teacher holding the third grade certificate could only teach in the third grade schools. This would induce our teachers to seek higher education and give us far better results in school work. The annual school meeting should decide whether they wished to be admitted into this or that grade school or not. When the voters at the annual school meeting should vote to have their school admitted into a certain grade or class of schools, then it should be the duty of the school board to make application to a committee for the purpose of acting upon these applications. This committee should be composed of the county superintendent, the chairman of the county board, and the chairman of the town in which the school is located. In order to save expense this committee should only act upon applications at the annual meeting of the county board of supervisors where all members of this committee would be present. This is similar to our three and four years high schools. person holding a limited state certificate may teach in a three years' high school but not in a four years' high school. A person must hold a life certificate in order to teach in a four years' high school in this state. Persons holding an unlimited state certificate may teach in any high school in the state.

WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN READING LIST.

Any

Parker-Historic Americans.

Paulson-Child's World. pp. 197–200.
Scudder-Life of Washington.
Seelye-Story of Washington.
Story-English Home of Washington.
Tuckerman-Critical Essays.

Washington, E. B.-Mother and Birthplace of George Washington. Cent., vol. 21. Washington at Mt. Vernon. Harp. Mag., vol. 18.

Washington Library of American Literature, vol. II.

Carey--Our Good President.
Gilder-Life Mask of Lincoln.
Holmes A. Lincoln.
Larcom-Lincoln's Passing Bell.
Library of American Lit., vol. 6.
Rice-Holiday Selections.
Stedman-Poems.

Stoddard-Poems.

THE FIRST HIGH SCHOOL COURSE.

In the History of Secondary Education in

Works. Vol. 1.).

Weems-Life of Washington.

Whipple - Character and Characteristic

Men.

is contributing to the School Review, he reprints, in the January number, the program of studies for the first high school which, as our readers know, was opened in May, 1821, in

Boston, with Mr. George B. Emerson as master. It will be remembered that the school was first called "The English Classical School," and that it was created to meet the needs of pupils from the public elementary schools who did not expect to go to college, and accordingly did not wish to enter the Boston Latin School, which was the public fitting school. Three years later the school is called, in a measure adopted by the school committee, "The English High School." Candidates for admission were required to be at least twelve years of age and "well acquainted with reading, writing, English grammar in all its branches, and arithmetic as far as simple proportion." The course of study extends over three years, and is as follows:

a year ago, the meetings were held in connection with the stated annual meetings of two well-known state associations of New York teachers.

The forenoon passed in joint session with the Grammar School Principals' Conference. The topic of "Fatigue," in its conditions, symptoms, and bearings upon public school practices, was forcefully presented by Dr. Smith Baker, of Utica, N. Y. Adopting the guiding clues of psycho-physical parallelism, the speaker revealed a newer meaning in education, which involved the combined processes of body and mind. The fatigue of the one must be regarded in light of the fatigue of the other. The neural conditions of fatigue, and the destruction of cells and fibers as a result of excessive work, were duly presented. Rest and alternation of activities in the daily program, and the claims of the individual and the exceptional child were dwelt upon as the practical issues of the topic.

A resume of the child-study movement and its results of a practical character were presented by Supt. C. L. Marsh, of North Tonawanda, N. Y., in his paper on "The Daily Program in the Light of the Results of ChildStudy." The problems of grading, grouping, and promoting children, the need of attention by teachers to physiological defects in pupils, the sequence of topics, the length of recitations, nature study, the age of adolescence and its peculiarities, and the selection of teachers, were among the themes selected for treatmnt in the light of what is now pretty well established concerning the characteristics of childhood.

The afternoon session was held in connection with the conference of the Associated Academic Principals. "Child-Study in the High School," and "Getting Acquainted with High School Boys and Girls," were the topics of the papers and reports presented, respectively, by Principals Burt B. Farnsworth, Lancaster, N. Y., and Myron T. Scudder, of the Hillhouse high school, New Haven, Conn.

HAWAII. HER UNIQUE POSITION.

The Hawaiian Islands are situated just within the northern tropic, 2,080 miles southwest of San Francisco. They are substantially the same distance from the other important island groups in the Pacific. They thus occupy an isolated and unique position in that broad ocean. This, with the other fact that they were out of the track of the early commerce of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the reason why they were so late in being brought to the knowledge of the rest

of the world. They were discovered by that daring and successful English navigator, Captain Cook, in 1778, on this third and last voyage into the Pacific and received from him the name of the Sandwich Islands, in honor of the First Lord of the Admiralty under whose auspices his voyages were made. By this name the islands were for a long time best known in Europe and America, but even in these continents it has been supplanted by the proper title, the Hawaiian Islands, derived from the largest of the group, and after which the people take their name. It is claimed that these islands were visited by the Spaniards at a much earlier period than Cook's discovery, and there is some evidence to sustain that claim; but if such was the case their existence was carefully concealed from the rest of the world.

It is an accepted fact that several centuries. before these islands were known to Europeans their inhabitants were accustomed to make voyages of thousands of miles to Samoa and other distant inhabited islands of Polynesia. In the folk-lore of the Hawaiians are found. many songs and narratives of these daring voyages, made, apparently, in large canoes, built up of planks and decked over, with a capacity of carrying a considerable crew, with stores and live stock sufficient for such extended voyages. This intercourse seems to have ceased some time before the visit of Europeans; but even then the inhabitants were daring mariners, maintaining frequent communication between the different islands and trips were made, with only the sun and stars as guides, in their large canoes on the open ocean between the two extreme islands, a distance of over 300 miles.

The inhabited islands are eight in number, comprising an area of nearly 7,000 square miles, running from northwest to southeast, a distance of 380 miles, with various outlying uninhabited islands extending some hundreds of miles away from the main group. They are of volcanic origin, very mountainous, the peaks being the highest in Polynesia, and the cultivated and habitable portions mainly a belt around each island on the lowlands, though there are some fertile portions extending up the mountain valleys and on the table-lands. While the rugged and volcanic character of the formation limits the arable area, it adds to the salubrity of the climate and the beauty of the scenery. Captain Dutton of the United States Army, who has made a critical study of these islands, says that in wildness and grandeur they far surpass all the other islands of the Pacific; that gorges little inferior to the Yosemite in magnitude are numerous; that in a certain shapeness of detail

and animation in mountain sculpture they are unique; and that over all is spread a mantle of tropical vegetation in comparison with which the richest verdure of our temperate zone is but the garb of poverty. The striking features of the topography are the volcanoes. Honolulu, the capital, is situated at the foot of an extinct volcano, whose crater and lofty rim constitute a marked attraction of its landscape; on all the islands are the evidences of their former activity; but on the largest, Hawaii, they appear in active, live and awful grandeur.

Here are situated the two grandest volcanoes in the world-Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Captain Dutton says of the former that no other in the world approaches it in the vastness of its mass or in the magnitude of its eruptive activity; that Ætna and all its adjuncts are immeasurably inferior, while Shasta, Hood, and Ranier, if melted down and run together into one pile, would still fall much below it; that, while some volcanoes, as those of Iceland, have disgorged at a single outbreak equal volumes of lava, the eruptions of Mauna Loa are all of great volume and with average intervals of eight years, any one of which represents more lava than Vesuvius has outpoured since the last days of Pompeii.

The climate is affected by three causes-the mountainous character of the islands, the trade winds and the ocean currents. The mountains, rising in Oahu, on which is located Honolulu, to 4,000 feet in height and on Hawaii to 14,000 feet, afford by their elevation marked changes in temperature and also have an important influence on the rainfall. On the northeastern or windward side of Oahu, for instance, the rainfall is heavy, the wind strong and the mountain slopes are well wooded, while the western slopes and coast line have a warmer and drier climate with less exuberant vegetation. The rainfall greatly varies in the different islands and even at different points on the same island, mainly influenced by the mountain. formation; at Honolulu the average annual rainfall is about three feet, while at Hilo, on Hawaii, it is sometimes as great as twenty feet. The trade winds from the northeast prevail for the greater portion of the year, imparting a delightful freshness and vigor to the atmosphere, only occasionally interrupted_by a south wind bringing moisture and heat. The ocean current setting down from Behring Sea surrounds the islands with a water temperature at least 10° lower than that of other regions of the same latitude. These causes combine to create an equable temperature, which maintains an average maximum of 75° in winter and 82° in summer. It may thus be seen that

the claim made for the Hawaiian Islands as the "Paradise of the Pacific" is a well founded

one.

Much of the area of the islands is, because of its mountainous character, sterile and not susceptible of cultivation. The arable lands are for the most part along the coast line and the well-watered mountain valleys; but of late years it has been found that abundant supplies of water can be obtained from artesian wells, and large areas of hitherto barren lands are being brought under cultivation as sugar plantations, thus adding largely to the productive wealth of the country. All the products of the sub-tropical temperate zone may be cultivated. The fruits of the tropics are in most profusion, though it is possible to grow those of the temperate zone on the elevated lands. Sugar, rice, tropical fruits, and coffee are the chief articles of export, but in the early days of the California gold era wheat in considerable quantities was raised, ground into flour and shipped to San Francisco. Extract from an address by Hon. 7. W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State.

5. Boys often through foolishness, thrust a pin into the flesh just above the knee. Why is it not painful?

COMPOSITION SUBJECTS FROM EVANGELINE.

The following list of subjects for compositions to be written by students reading Longfellow's "Evangeline," may be helpful to those who have classes reading this poem. The list was prepared by Miss Minnie Hampton, of the schools of Greenboro, N. C.:

I. Grand Pre.

2. Benedict's Home.

3. Benedict and Evangeline. 4. Evangeline's Lovers.

5. An Indian Summer Day, September 4, 1755.

6. The Night of the Contract.

7. Rene Leblanc, the Notary Public. 8. The Betrothal Feast.

9. The Proclamation.

10. How the Evil Tidings Were Received

by the Women.

II. The Preparation for Departure.

12. The Last Night in Acadie.

13. The Death of Benedict, and the Departure.

14. Their Wanderings.

15. The Journey to Opelousas.

16. Basil's Southern Home.

17. Basil's Appearance and Welcome. 18. The "Joyous Feast."

19. The Pursuit of Gabriel.

20. Evangeline's Stay at the Mission.

21. Her Search Continued.

22. Evangeline, a Sister of Mercy.

23. The Lovers Reunited.

-North Carolina Journal of Education.

QUESTIONS ON LONGITUDE.

1. What is longitude? How measured? 2. How many degrees in the earth's circumference?

3. Through how many degrees does the earth's surface pass in making one revolution on its axis?

4. How long does it take the earth to make one revolution on its axis?

5. For every degree of longitude, therefore, what difference in time must there be?

6. How many degrees correspond to one hour?

7. When it is noon at Greenwich will it be A. M. or P. M. with us? Why?

8. A lives at St. John, Newfoundland (53° W. Long.) and B lives at Toronto (79° W. Long.). When it is noon at St. John, what is the time at Toronto?