NIGHT-SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK AND PARIS. 63 1 



was a purpose always present to the minds of the founders of the 

 Royal Society, and some preliminary steps toward its execution were 

 even attempted by them. Bishop Sprat* has left on record the 

 "queries and directions, what things are needful to he observed," 

 composed with this view. Some of these inquiries sound, to our 

 instructed ears, rather comical. We take the following specimens : 



"Whether diamonds and other precious stones grow again after three or four 

 years, in the same places where they have been digged out ? 



Whether there be a fountain in Sumatra which runneth pure balsam ? 



"Whether in the island of Sambrero there be fouud a vegetable with a worm 

 for its root, diminishing more and more, according as the tree groweth in great- 

 ness ? 



"What ground there may be for that relation concerniug horns taking root 

 and growing about Goa? 



"Whether there be a tree in Mexico, that yields water, wine, vinegar, oyl, 

 milk, honey, wax, thread, and needles ? 



The answer to this last query, furnished to them by one of their 

 " merchants of light," was, that " the Cokos tree yields all this and 

 more." 



The disproportionate importance attached to this species of infor- 

 mation by the revivers of science is curiously illustrated by the fact 

 that the funds of the Royal Society having been exhausted in printing 

 Willughby's " History of Fishes," they were obliged to decline under- 

 taking the publication of Newton's " Principia." Indeed, one of their 

 most ingenious members was as fully convinced as Bacon had been, 

 that the true highway to that knowledge which is power lay in this 

 direction. Of this remarkable person it is now time to give some 

 account. Edinburgh Mev lew. 



[To be continued.'] 



-+*+- 



NIGHT-SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK AND PARIS. 



By ALICE IIYNEMAN RHINE. 



THE system of night instruction is so widely different in Europe 

 and America that the following statistics are given with a view 

 to show which of the two methods, as represented by the schools of 

 New York and Paris, has been most successful and of most practical 

 utility to its students. 



At the present time there are in the city of New York thirty-two 

 free evening schools. Thirty-one of these are primaries or intermedi- 

 ates for children ; the remaining one is the evening high school, which 



* " The History of the Royal Society of London," 1GGY, p. 158. 



