648 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



important it is, if we wish to estimate the real amount of brain activity 

 in the twenty-four hours, to inquire into the out-of -school tasks, for 

 while, when looking only at the time-table, we may picture to our- 

 selves a boy comfortably asleep in his bed, he may in reality be en- 

 gaged in hammering his Greek lines into his brain. The same pupil 

 writes : " The extreme variableness of the work makes it not im- 

 probable that some boys (as I did myself at one time) have to work 

 the whole day without intermission (i. e., of course, dm-ing whole 

 school-days), and many, especially in winter, work all the evening, 

 from a quarter-past six to ten o'clock, with only an interval for 

 supper." 



A teacher of languages in England complains that his son, who is 



at the grammar-school at , has lessons given him to learn which 



occupy him \intil ten at night. A gentleman in Devonshire informs 

 me that his boy brings home from school tasks which frequently keep 

 him up till midnight. At a high-school in a large town, I know that 

 some of the pupils have suffered from overwork ; two in one family 

 have recently died from " brain-fever," due, it is considered by a medi- 

 cal man, to this cause. Dr. Fayette Taylor, of New York, has drawn 

 a graphic picture of what the Americans are suffering from intemper- 

 ance in study, and we should do well to take warning from it. " Girls 

 arrive at twelve or fourteen, and, at the threshold of the most impor- 

 tant period of existence, utterly unfitted for passing through it. Ex- 

 citable, with wide-open eyes and ears for every sight and sound which 

 can excite feeling, vapid and intense in mental activity, with thin 

 limbs, narrow chest, and ungainly back, we meet these twelve-year-old 

 products of civilization going to school with an average of thirteen 

 books under their feeble arms — for I have found by actual count that 

 thirteen is the average number of studies which they ' take ' nowa- 

 days." 



I may here record the hours of a school for girls, which appear to 

 me to exceed what is wholesome, and to be well calculated to lessen 

 their mental elasticity and interfere with their healthy development. 

 These girls rise at 6.25 ; prayers are at seven, and breakfast at a quar- 

 ter to eight. Their studies commence at a quarter-past eight and last 

 till twelve, with a break of a quarter of an hour ; then dinner, during 

 which silence is enjoined and a book read aloud ; then an hour's 

 recreation is allowed. Needlework and school-work follow for two 

 hours ; half an hour's recreation succeeds, and then come two hours 

 and a half of study and instruction of various kinds. The next meal 

 after the twelve-o'clock dinner is at half-past six, and this is the last. 

 It is succeeded by half an hour's recreation, and this by half an hour's 

 study. Prayers end the day at half -past eight. Here we have nine 

 and a half hours (including religious exercises) of sedentary occupa- 

 tion, and only two hours and a quarter for recreation and one hour and 

 a half for meals. I think we shall be agreed that a little less school 



