LITERARY NOTICES. 



845 



common type, and this is strikingly similar 

 to the popular conceptions of the Aryans 

 and other great races when not identical 

 with them. The stories are classified as 

 traditional stories regarded as fictitious ; 

 stories reported as true, or anecdotes ; his- 

 torical narratives ; stories of moral philoso- 

 phy, or proverbs ; poetry and music, and 

 riddles. The myths and tales of the negroes 

 in America are all derived from African pro- 

 totypes, and through the American negro 

 have exercised a deep and wide influence on 

 the folklore of the Indians, and even of the 

 American white race. This fact gives strong 

 incentives to the study of the subject by 

 Americans. Besides the stories, an analysis 

 is given of their general features, a bibliog- 

 raphy, directions for the pronunciation of 

 Ki-Mbundu, a description of the country and 

 people, and copious illustrative notes. 



Report of the Commissioner of Education 

 FOR THE Year 1890-'91. Washington: 

 Government Printing Office. Two vol- 

 umes. Pp. 1549. 



The whole number of pupils in schools of 

 all grades, public and private, is given at 

 14,669,069, constituting 23-09 per cent, or 

 not quite one fourth, of all the population. 

 Besides these are to be counted pupils in 

 evening schools, art, industrial, and business 

 schools, schools for defective classes and for 

 Indians, in all about 300,000 pupils, which 

 would swell the whole number to nearly 15,- 

 000,000. The commissioner remarks upon a 

 correspondence between the waves of indus- 

 trial prosperity and depression that pass over 

 the country and the relative attendance upon 

 the private and the public schools. The whole 

 number of teachers in schools of both kinds 

 is nearly 425,000. The entire expenditure 

 during the year for public schools was $146,- 

 800,163, or $17.67 for each pupil attending 

 135'7 days, and $2.31 per capita of the whole 

 population. Of the income for schools nearly 

 seventy per cent comes from local taxes and 

 nineteen per cent from State taxes. Besides 

 these and other statistics of the schools in the 

 United States, the first volume of the report 

 gives papers on Secondary Education in New 

 Zealand ; Education in France ; a review of 

 the Educational Systems of England and 

 Scotland and their Operations for ]890-'91; 

 the Educational System of Ireland ; Industrial 



and Technical Education in Central Europe, 

 Education in Russia, Japan, Italy, Corea, and 

 Hawaii ; Legal Education in the United States 

 and in Canada, Australia, Spanish America, 

 Japan, and China ; Colleges of Agriculture 

 and the Mechanic jVrts. The second volume 

 gives a " Name Register " of State and City 

 Educational Officers ; statistics of city, sec- 

 ondary, higher, and professional schools ; 

 papers on Education in Alaska, the Educa- 

 tion of the Colored Race, Class Intervals in 

 City Public Schools, Educational Statistics, 

 discussions of current educational questions, 

 a report on the physical and mental condi- 

 tion of 50,000 London school children, and 

 Facilities in Experimental Psychology in the 

 Colleges of the United States. These articles 

 are followed by statistical tables. 



Science and Hebrew Tradition. By Thomas 

 H. HuxLET. Collected Essays, Vol. IV. 

 New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 372. 

 Price, $1.25. 



The essays contained in this volume are 

 concerned mainly with the question whether 

 the Old Testament is wholly true or partly 

 legendary. The first three, however, have 

 no direct connection with those that follow. 

 They deal with the discoveries and inductions 

 of paleontology, and can be said to bear upon 

 the above question only by furnishing sam- 

 ples of the scientific method of research. 

 They include Prof. Huxley's lectures on evo- 

 lution delivered in New York in 1876, and 

 his lecture on the Method of Zadig. The 

 fourth essay of the volume, entitled The In- 

 terpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of 

 Nature, was written for a controversy' with 

 Mr. Gladstone upon the correctness of the 

 account of creation in the book of Genesis. 

 The one following Mr. Gladstone and Gen- 

 esis is a continuation of the same theme. In 

 both of them Prof. Huxley denies that the 

 order in which the several kinds of living 

 creatures are said to have been created is the 

 same as that revealed in the records of pale- 

 ontology. In the next two essays he gives 

 the facts which conflict with the story of the 

 Noachian Deluge. The last in the volume is 

 A Study of the Evolution of Theology, the 

 data for which are drawn from the practices 

 of the ancient Israelites and of certain Poly- 

 nesian tribes. 



Believing that all claims to infallibility 



