430 PKIZE-QUESTIONS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



Competitors must not sign their papers, but add a private mark, 

 given also on a sealed envelope containing their name and address. 



There will be excluded from competing: 1. Active members of the 

 society ; 2d. Those who make themselves known in any way, or who send 

 their papers after the proper time, or whose works have been previously 

 communicated to other academies. 



The society will retain all manuscripts addressed to it; but authors, 

 whose papers justify it, may obtain copies at their expense. 



Adopted at Mons, session of March 5, 1874. 



A. HOUZEAU DE LEHAIE, 



General Secretary. 



EOYAL INSTITUTE FOR THE El^COURAGEMENT OF THE 

 NATURAL, ECONOMICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL SCI- 

 ENCES, NAPLES, ITALY. 



Programme for tJie year 1874. 



I. 



The following proposition, which the institute submits to the study 

 of the men of learning in Italy and other countries, is of undisputed 

 utility. For what a miserable spectacle is presented by those to whom 

 nature has been only a step-mother, having deprived them of sight, 

 hearing, and speech. How much intellectual power, how much human 

 labor, is lost in those born deaf and dumb or blind. It is well known 

 that many illustrious men of the most civilized nations have given their 

 life-work in behalf of our fellow-men who are condemned to a deplor- 

 able inaction for want of the j)rincipal organs of labor. Yet, although 

 much has been accomplished already, there is much still to be done 

 before the goal is reached. 



The institute, therefore, hopes that the number of benefactors will be 

 increased by the discussion of the following proposition : 



" Give the history and a critical analysis of all the means of instruc- 

 tion, physical and mechanical, which have been proposed up to the 

 present time for those born blind or deaf and dumb, for the purpose of 

 directing future efforts to the most efficacious and the best adapted 

 means, and thus contributing to the discovery of more appropriate 

 agencies for the furtherance of an object of so much social benevolence 

 and of scientific interest." 



The subject of the instruction of the blind must be treated thus : 

 First, the methods for teaching literature and sciences 5 secondly, those 

 for teaching music ; thirdly, those for teaching arts and trades. 



The methods for the instruction of the deaf and dumb must be divided 

 principally into, first, those which teach them to write ; secondly, those 

 which teach theui to speak. 



