192 
NATURE 
[Fuly 6, 1871 

drawn from evil and corrupting influences, and disciplined in 
habits of order, attention and cleanliness, but they receive such 
an amount of positive instruction as greatly facilitates their 
progress in the more advanced schools. There appears to be no 
doubt that by regular attendance in an infant school, provided 
with efficient teachers, a large proportion of ordinary children 
of six or seven years of age may be enabled to pass in the first 
standard of the new code. 
The inducements which lead parents to keep older children 
from school are almost wholly absent in the cases of those under 
seven years of age, who are able to earn little or nothing, and 
are of no use in the house. And the fact that the younger 
children are taken care of in an infant scho»l will often remove 
one of the chief difficulties in the way of securing the regular 
attendance of the elder girls of a family at the junior and senior 
schools. 
The subjects in which we recommend that instruction should be 
given in infant schools are :— 
a. Morality and religion. 
6. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
c. Object lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise 
of the hands and eyes as is given in the ‘‘ Kinder-Garten” 
system. 
In addition, the general recommendations respecting music and 
drill apply to infant schools, in which singing and physical exer- 
cises, adapted to the tender years of the children, are of para- 
mount importance. 
JUNIOR AND SENIOR SCHOOLS.—We recommend that certain 
kinds of instruction shall form an essen ial pa t of the teaching 
of every elementary scho.1; while others may or may not be 
added to them, at the ds:retion of the managers of individual 
schools, or by the specia’ direction of the Board. 
A. ESSENTIAL SUBJECTS. 
a. Morality and religion. 
6. Reading, writing, and arithmetic: English grammar in 
senior schools ; with mensuration in senior boys’ schools. 
c. Systematised object lessons, embracing in the six school 
years a course of elementary instruction in physical science, and 
serving as an introduction to the science examinations which are 
conducted by the Science and Art Department. 
d. The History of Britain. 
e. Elementary geography. 
f. Elementary social economy. 
g. Elementary drawing, leading up to the examinations in 
mechanical drawing, and to the art teaching of the Science and 
Art Department. 
h. In girls’ schools, plain needlework and cutting out. 
B. DISCRETIONARY SUBJECTS, which may be taught to ad- 
vanced scholars. 
a. Algebra and geometry. 
4. Latin or a modern language. 
Il.—PuBLIc ELEMENTARY EVENING SCHOOLS 
Evening Schools are of great importance, partly as a means of 
providing elementary education for those who, for various 
reasons, fail to obtain sufficient instruction in elementary day 
schools ; and, partly, because it is easy to connect with such 
schools special classes in which a higher kind of instruction than 
that contemplated by the Sixth Standard can be given to the 
more intelligent and older scholars. In this manner the ad- 
vantages of further instruction may be secured by those scholars 
who are unable or unwilling to go into secondary schools, but 
who are both able and willing to pay for instruction of a more 
advanced kind than that given in primary schools. 
We recommend that the course of instruction in these evening 
schools shall be of the same general character as that already 
recommended for the junior and senior ciementary day schools. 
Elementary evening schools sh uld, in all cases, be separate, 
and the General Recommendation (”) respecting moral and re- 
ligious instruction applies to them, In all other respects we 
recommend that the managers should be left free to adapt the 
instruction given in the schools to local requirements. 
According to the New Code, the scholars in evening schools 
must be not under 12, nor above 18, years of age, and no attend- 
ance is reckoned unless the scholar has been under instruction in 
secular subjects for one hour and a half. 
III.—Science AND ART CLASSES 
Numerous classes for instruction in Science and Art are already 
in existence; their current expenses, and the remuneration of 
teachers, being defrayed, in part, by the grants paid upon the 
result of the annual examinations, and, in part, by pupils’ fees, 



These classes are usually held in the evening, and are fre- 
quently connected with evening schools. 
The Science and Art Department comes into relation with 
these classes, and with the examination of the scholars taught 
in them, through the agency of Committees who voluntarily 
charge themselves with the responsibility of seeing that the 
regulations of the Department are carried out, The establish- 
ment of Science and Art Classes in connection with Public 
Elementary Evening Schools, therefore, would not involve the 
Board either in trouble or expen-e. 
We recommend that the formation of such classes be en- 
couraged and facilitated. 
The Elementary Education Act does not confer upon a School 
Board the power of providing secondary schools, and it is silent 
as to the mde by which a connection may be established be- 
tween the elementary and the secondary schools of the country. 
But it is of such importance to the efficiency of popular educa- 
tion that means should be provided by which scholars of more 
than average merit shall be enabled to pass from elementary 
into secondary schools. that we feel it our duty to offer some 
suggestions upon the subject 
The practical difficulty in the way of the passage of boys and 
girls from an elementary into a second ry school, is the cost of 
their maintenance ; and the best way of meeting that difficulty 
appears to be to establish exhibitions equivalent to the earnings 
of boys and girls of from 13 to 16 years of age, tenable for the 
period during which they reman under instruction in the 
secondary schools. The funds out of which such exhibitions 
may be created already exist, and the machinery for distributing 
them has been provided by the Legislature in the Endowed 
Schools Act. 
The Endowed Schools Commissioners have fully recognised 
the claims of scholars in public elementary schools to share the 
advantages of the endowed schools. We recommend, there- 
fore, that the Board enter into official communication with the 
Endowed Schools Commissioners, and agree with them upon 
some scheme by which the children in public elementary 
schools shall be enabled to obtain their rightful share of the 
benefits of those endowments with which the Commissioners are 
empowered to deal. 
T. H. HuXLEy (Chairman). 
JosePH ANGUS 
ALFRED BARRY 
Epm. Hay CuRRIE 
EMILY DAVIES 
LAWRENCE 
BeENJN. LUCRAFT 
J. MacGREGOR 
CHARLES REED 
James H. Rice 
WILLIAM ROGERS 
Epw. J. TABRUM 
Joun G. CROMWELL— 
Except that, looking to the three concluding clauses of the 
Report and to the sixth recommendation founded thereon, I feel 
unable to join in recommending that ‘‘ Latin or a modern 
language may be taught to advanced scholars” in schcols pro- 
vided by the Board. 
J. ALLANSON PICTON— 
Except the application of General Recommendation (/) to pub- 
lic elementary evening schouls. 
SANDON— 
Except that I object to the teaching of Latin or a modem 
language in primary public elementary schools; and that I 
also object to pronouncing any opinion in this Report upon the 
appropriation of existing endowments to the public elementary 
schools of London, as I do not consider that it is competent to 
a committee appointed by the School Board ‘‘to consider and 
report upon the scheme of education to be adopted in the 
public elementary schools” to consider, or make recommenda- 
tions upon, this important subject. 

MR. BENTHAM’S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
TO THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 
(Concluded from page 172) 
FE RANCE, without any special endemic charac er, unites within 
her limits portions of several biological regions, thus requiring 
from her naturalists the study of all the European Floras and 
