LITERARY NOTICES. 



113 



visited here and elsewhere, this certainly 

 struck me as being the best and most perfect 

 of its kind. The children were divided into 

 classes, each of which was examined by the 

 master, the result of which greatly surprised 

 myself and some friends who were present. 

 The director, who justly took great pride in 

 his work, assured us that all these boys 

 under his care (whose ages did not exceed 

 eleven), in consequence of the quickness, 

 facility, and ability with which they re- 

 ceived his instructions, bad learned in one 

 year what he had been unable to teach in 

 double that space of time to children in 

 Germany. He added that he was con- 

 stantly called upon to answer a shower of 

 questions and remarks made by the pupils 

 on the theme of the lesson, which having 

 explained, he allows them time and liberty 

 to discuss the difficult points, until they 

 have quite mastered them. On their first en- 

 trance they appear listless and uninterested ; 

 but, as the love of knowledge is developed 

 and grows upon them, they often, when 

 school-time is up, beg permission to remain 

 an hour longer in class." 



This was certainly a curious pheno- 

 menon to stumble upon among the bar- 

 barians. "We recommend the troubled 

 school-hunters, of whom there seem to 

 be many who can find nothing satisfac- 

 tory at home, to send their children to 

 Salonica — the missionaries will convoy 

 them. 



Deeply interested in what she saw, 

 and being of a turn of mind to look 

 into causes and seek explanations, she 

 desired to inform herself further in 

 regard to the methods of this Greek 

 teacher, and remarks : 



" Very much pleased with all I had seen 

 and heard in this establishment, I begged 

 the director to let me have one of the class- 

 books containing the routine of teaching. 

 He replied that he had no special work on 

 the subject to abide by, and that the routine 

 of lessons, left to his own judgment, had 

 been combined by him partly from the sys- 

 tem he had studied in Germany, and partly 

 from ideas suggested to him by reading the 

 philosophical works of Herbert Spencer, for 

 which he appeared to have a great admira- 

 tion." 



The writer in Scrihner''s Monthly 

 should, therefore, feel encouraged. If 

 " a new educational system, which, 



VOL. XIV. — 8 



having had a fair trial, will eventually 

 be adopted in all the educational estab- 

 lishments of the Greeks," has been 

 specially moulded by ideas derived 

 from Herbert Spencer, it will be no 

 longer possible to say that his work is 

 without practical result. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Scientific Memoirs. Being Experimental 

 Coutributious to a Knowledge of Radi- 

 ant Energy. By John William Draper, 

 M. D. Harper & Bros., 1878. Pp. 473. 

 Price $3. 



Those who read the concluding paper 

 of Dr. Montgomery in the October Popular 

 Science Monthly, on the present aspects of 

 the "Problem of Life," will remember the 

 admirable terms in which he refers to a dis- 

 covery of Dr. J. W. Draper, which seems to 

 have a most important bearing on this sub- 

 ject. Though made many years ago, it is 

 only now beginning to be appreciated in its 

 full significance. The last generation has 

 been especially devoted to the cultivation of 

 the sciences of radiant energy and of that 

 plastic, protoplasmic material out of which 

 the fabrics of all life are spun ; Dr. Draper 

 anticipated the developments that were to 

 take place in these fields of inquiry by first 

 determining, thirty-four years ago, M'hat ray 

 of the solar spectrum takes effect upon the 

 green parts of plants to decompose car- 

 bonic acid — the initiative and fundamental 

 change that maintains all life processes. 

 He was the first to decompose carbonic 

 acid by exposing leaves to the sun in the 

 actual spectrum, and to prove that it is the 

 yellow ray that produces the change. 



The history of science contains many 

 interesting illustrations of the appearance 

 of men of rare and exceptional genius, 

 whose thoughts pierce the future, and who 

 spend their intellectual lives far in advance 

 of their contemporaries. They are the men 

 who lay foundations upon which others 

 build, who carve the great outlines of re- 

 search which other men come to fill up with 

 details, who open paths of inquiry which 

 other men pursue to their maturer results. 

 Dr. Draper is one of these broad original 

 thinkers whose work has contributed largely 



