474 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 223 



to illustrate the solar system ? How have astron- 

 omers been so clever as to find out the names of 

 the stars ? " On the question of over-pressui-e, Mr. 

 Romanes quoted the testimony of Mrs. Henry 

 Sidgwick and Sir Spencer Wells, and stated that 

 he had discovered but few cases of break-down. 

 This proved, however, not that the system was 

 perfect, but that English girls have marvellously 

 vigorous constitutions. He then stated some grave 

 abuses which had come to his knowledge, against 

 which he desired to see public opinion directed. 

 In some of the high schools, no check is placed on 

 the ambition of young girls to ' distinguish them- 

 selves : there is no provision for bodily exercise, 

 no play-ground, and the gymnasium, vvhere there 

 is one, is not used by the harder-worked students. 

 A correspondent informed him that in one of the 

 most famous high schools, girls usually began 

 work at six, and worked ten or eleven hours a 

 day : as examination approached, these hours were 

 increased to fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or even 

 eighteen hours. The time fixed by the school 

 time-table was, it is true, eight hours, but it was 

 absolutely impossible for any girl to keep to 

 this. 



ENGLISH IN THE PREPARATORY 

 SCHOOLS. 



The changes that have taken place in recent 

 years in the methods of language-study have done 

 much to advance the cause of good learning. 

 Every teacher owes a lasting debt to those who 

 have wrought out and to some extent perfected 

 these new and advanced methods. The debt of 

 the teacher is, however, but a tithe of that due 

 from those who have thus been spared laborious 

 and well-nigh fruitless gropings through the laby- 

 rinths of a complex grammar and the blind by- 

 paths of inexplicable idioms. Where the new 

 methods have been wisely held in check by a 

 recognition of the legitimate functions of gram- 

 matical study, the results have been in the main 

 entirely satisfactory. Languages are now learned 

 much more rapidly and easily than was the case 

 a few years ago, and are thus the earlier brought 

 into requisition as the means to some other and 

 better end. Parrot-like knowledge of inflections 

 and rules has ceased to be the goal of linguistic 

 scholarship : the ability to use a language as a 

 medium between the possessor and something to 

 be sought in literature or life, is now more gener- 

 ally recognized as the purpose of such studies and 

 the main reason for them. 



It is somewhat astonishing, that, in view of all 

 this, some more practical and rational method has 

 not been adopted in the study of our own lan- 



guage as a vehicle of thought. In many of the 

 colleges and universities there is, to be sure, a 

 well-defined mania for philological research and 

 an abnormal appetite for Anglo-Saxon ro 'ts. In 

 our common schools this tendency is to some ex- 

 tent imitated by an unwearying attention to the 

 minutiae of grammatical structure and the puz- 

 zles of syntactical forms. Of practice and hum- 

 drum drill in the use of English, there is little, in 

 either school or college, in comparison with the 

 importance of the subject and the needs of the 

 students. 



This lack of proper training in the use of Eng- 

 lish is due largely to two causes : 1°, the want 

 of some efficient method in the teaching of Eng- 

 lish ; and, 2°, the reluctance shown by our best 

 teachers to engaging in this branch of work. 

 Possibly the second reason may be the result 

 of the first ; possibly it is the result of some in- 

 herent prejudice, or some unconfessed doubts as 

 to the dignity of this kind of work. As to these 

 last reasons, it must be acknowledged, that, under 

 the existing methods, the w^ork is far from agree- 

 able or inspiring to either teacher or taught, and 

 no teacher can justly be blamed for jjreferring to 

 avoid it whenever possible. The question may 

 well be asked, however, whether this very re- 

 luctance is not one main cause why this important 

 branch of work has been so long neglected, and 

 whether, if our best-equipped and most earnest 

 teachers were to apply themselves to a solution of 

 the problem, it would not soon be solved as easily 

 as were numerous other knotty problems in educa- 

 tional methods. 



The writer has had occasion to test at college 

 entrance examinations the familiarity of appli- 

 cants with the forms and use of their mother- 

 tongue. The results have been in the main un- 

 satisfactory, and at times discouraging. The 

 commonest grammatical forms seem entirely un- 

 familiar ; a composition of a dozen sentences ex- 

 hibits the most utter disregard of the simplest 

 grammatical and rhetorical constructions. Stu- 

 dents who construe Virgil with ease, who are on 

 familiar terms with Euclid, and see no serious 

 difficulties in Legendre, stumble and hesitate and 

 fail in the use of their own language. To illus- 

 trate. Ata, recent examination the students were 

 asked to decline the pronoun 'thou.' A large per 

 cent of those examined failed utterly. Here are 

 a few examples of how this inoffensive pronoun 

 was treated : — 



1. Thou, thine, thou ; their, theirs, them. 



2. Thou, yours, thou ; same. 



3. Thou, thine, thy ; they, theirs, they. 



4. Thou, thine, thee ; they, theirs, them. 



