feel that this thing is not to be done with impunity, and make the public aware of their indignation. Through the newspaper press, or through some high-minded official, or by resolutions published to the world, or otherwise, according to circumstances, the professional honor and rights should be vindicated.-N. E. Jour. of Education.

The Choice of Occupation.

Parents often complain to me that their sons who have been to school all their lives have no choice of occupation, or that they choose to be accountants or clerks, instead of manufacturers or mechanics. These complaints are invariably unreasonable, for how can one choose at all, or wisely, when he knows so little?

I confidently believe that the development of the manual elements in school will prevent those serious errors in the choice of a vocation which too often wreck the fondest hopes. It is not assumed that every boy who enters a manual-training school is to be a mechanic; his training leaves him free. No pupils were ever more unprejudiced, better prepared to look below the surface, less the victims of a false gentility. Some find that they have no taste for manual arts, and will turn into other paths-law, medicine, or literature. Great facility in the acquisition and use of language is often accompanied by a lack of either mechanical interest or power. When such a bias is discovered the lad should unquestionably be sent to his grammar and dictionary rather than to the laboratory or draughting-room. On the other hand, decided aptitude for handicraft is not unfrequently coupled with a strong aversion to and unfitness for abstract and theoretical investigations. There can be no doubt that in such cases more time should be spent in the shop, and less in the lecture and recitation-room. Some who develop both natural skill and strong intellectual powers will push on through the polytechnic school into the professional life, as engineers and scientists. Others will find their greatest usefulness, as well as highest happiness, in some branch of mechanical work, into which they will readily step when they leave school. All will gain intellectually by their experience in contact with things. The grand result will be an increasing interest in manufacturing pursuits, more intelligent mechanics, more successful manufacturers, better lawyers, more skillful physicians, and more useful citizens.—From "The Fruits of Manual Training," by Professor C. M. Woodward, in Popular Science Monthly for July.

Shall we Put Spectacles on Children?

In a paper with this title Professor Julian J. Chisholm, M. D., of the University of Maryland, makes a plea for providing children with the means of counteracting their congenital or acquired defects of vision. According to the traditions, the need of spectacles is an indication of old age, and so the world interprets it. A better knowledge, however, is diffusing itself among the medical profession, and from them to the public. While advancing years may be a factor, it is only one of many causes inducing defective vision. The action of the perfect eye conforms to the law of optics that, unless a lens focuses accurately on the recipient surface, the image made must be more or less imperfect. In front of the lens there is a broad, circular ligament of the eye, which presses against it, and, when objects at a short distance are to be looked at, by the action of a muscle (the ciliary), the compressing ligament is relaxed, so that the lens, its natural elasticity responding at once to the relief, becomes more convex, and is, therefore, in condition to focus more powerfully light coming from near objects. What is called accommodation, or ability to change the focus, is, then, a muscular act. When the accommodating muscles are temporarily enfeebled by diseased conditions of the system at large, they do not lift off sufficiently the flattening band, or they are too weak to keep up the continued action for the relief of lens pressure; hence we often find children recently recovered from an attack of measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping-cough, or from any one of the depressing diseases of childhood, unable to study as they did before the attack. A weak-magnifying spectacle, by helping the muscles to do their work, will enable such children to continue their studies till tonics, daily administered, restore the needful strength to the enfeebled muscles. The foregoing statements are based upon perfect eyes. Unfortunately, the eyeball, with the many other features, has not always the perfection of symmetry. Near-sighted long eyes and oversighted flat eyes are the common deviations from the standard shape. In the near-sighted eye, called myopic, the eye is so long from front to back that the lens is too far from the retina. The result is, that rays of light from a distant object come to a focus, and have begun to diverge when they reach the retina, so that the image formed is blurred. The second deviation in the form of the eye is called hyperopia. This is a flat eye, a very common form in children. It

is a congenital defect, in which the crystalline lens is located so near the retina that light, passing into the eye, is stopped by the retina before it comes to a focus. This must also produce an ill-defined picture. Unfortunately, faulty eyes, which give out under use, do not appear differently from perfectly shaped ones. The flattening, or the elongation, is not in the exposed cornea. It is usually at the expense of the inner half of the eyeball, hid away in the socket. If children, either by inheritance or acquisition, have misshaped eyes, so that they can not see objects clearly through the usual range of distances, what can be the propriety of allowing them to go through life as if in a constant fog, when a properly selected glass clears up the mist, and enables them to see as others do?-Popular Science Monthly for July.

Good Language.

As soon as a child begins to lisp its first broken sentence its education should begin. Habits are formed which will exist to a greater or less degree throughout life. Such being the case, the conversation of the older members of the family should be carefully guarded, lest the little ones hear and learn ungrammatical expressions and slang, which, sad to say, are so rife among our young people of the present day. The servants, with whom children spend much of their time, should be chosen with reference to this matter. A mother should feel it her duty to point out any grammatical mistake made by them, and insist on their language being correct, respectful, and devoid of slang at all times. It is exceedingly difficult to break children of habits once formed, and care in this direction will save much trouble and annoyance. One way to cultivate the use of language, and at the same time to learn of the occupations and companions of her children, is for the mother to encourage the daily narration of what they have seen, heard and enjoyed, and the telling of their little experiences. The study of pictures, moreover, in which every child delights, may be used as a great provocation of language. Children always love to look at pictures, and can almost always be induced to talk about them. This study teaches them observation, and how accurately to describe whatever they see. When stories are read to children they should be obliged to reproduce them, using as far as possible the language of the book. The memory is strengthened in this way, a habit of attention formed, and the power

of expression increased. If such plans as these are systematically carried out, they will prove a wonderful help in the thorough education of a child. The constant, careful teaching and kind suggestions of parents will accomplish a work which can never be performed by study, and in after years such early home training will show itself in a ready command of language and an easy, graceful power of conversation.-National Presbyterian.

Option in School Studies.

In education, as in other things, I am a firm beliver in the principle of expending the least force which will accomplish the object in view. If a language is to be learned, I would teach it in the easiest known method, and at the age when it can be easiest learned. But there is another theory which is often acted upon, though seldom explicitly stated, the theory that, for the sake of discipline, hardness that is avoidable should be deliberately imposed upon boys; as, for instance, by forcing a boy to study many languages, who has no gifts that way, and can never attain to any mastery of them. To my mind the only justification of any kind of discipline, training, or drill is attainment of the appropriate end of that discipline. It is a waste for society, and an outrage upon the individual, to make a boy spend the years when he is most teachable in a discipline, the end of which he can never reach, when he might have spent them in a different discipline, which would have been rewarded by achievement. Herein lies the fundamental reason for options among school as well as college studies, all of which are liberal. A mental discipline which takes no account of differences of capacity and taste is not well directed. It follows that there must be variety in education instead of uniform prescription. To ignorant or thoughtless people it seems that the wisdom and experience of the world ought to have produced by this time a uniform course of instruction good for all boys, and made up of studies permanently preeminent; but there are two strong reasons for believing that this convenient result is unattainable; in the first place, the uniform boy is lacking; and in the second place, it is altogether probable that the educational value of any established study, far from being permanently fixed, is constantly changing as new knowledge accumulates and new sciences come into being. Doubtless the eleventh century thought it had a permanent curriculum in "Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, an

gulus, astra"; doubtless the course of study which Erasmus followed was held by the teachers of that day to supply the only sufficient liberal education; and we all know that since the year 1600, or thereabouts, it has been held by the wisest and most cultivated men that Greek, Latin, and mathematics are the only good disciplinary studies. Whewell, whose foible was omniscience, did not hesitate to apply to these three studies the word permanent. But if history proves that the staples of education have in fact. changed, reason says still more clearly that they must change. It would be indeed incredible that organized education should not take account of the progress of knowledge. We may be sure that the controlling intellectual forces of the actual world, century by century, penetrate educational processes, and that languages, literatures, philosophies, or sciences which show themselves fruitful and powerful, must win recognition as liberal arts and proper means of mental discipline.-Pres. C. W. Eliot, in June Century.

THE Present Age says: The assignment of lessons for home study by teachers in the public schools has been recently criticised and condemned by the superintendents both of the Milwaukee and Chicago schools. Superintendent Anderson, of Milwaukee, has made a careful investigation, and recommends its abolition in that city. As a rule, he says, the practice is unnecessary, as pupils in schools where home study is discouraged stand as high in scholarship as in those where it is practiced. The practice, he says, operates to the positive injury of the pupil, physically and mentally.

We regret that we cannot agree with the eminent authority quoted by our contemporary. The question of home work, or no home work, is not mere theorizing with the writer. It has been our custom for years to require all students above a certain age and class, say ten years old and the fourth grade, to do some work at home. We have seen that this work was regular-i. e., assigned week in and week out, and not excessive in quantity. The benefits arising from the system were and are manifold. The children are taught system; they get in the way of regular habits of work; by having some set task to do at home and comparatively alone, they become independent; they learn, by practice, how to use books, how to read, how and where to obtain information—one of the most useful things school-life can impart; they acquire from regular, daily