566 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
Boys. 3rd Stage-——This year they are taught the principles of 
the six simple mechanical powers, the hydrostatic press, and the 
parallelograms of force.and of velocities. 
It was a class in this stage at which I was lately present in 
Birmingham, and was so much struck with the intelligence of the 
boys, and the way in which they drew upon their own and their 
parents’ experience, to furnish illustrative replies. The experience 
at Liverpool is, that in every school some five per cent. or more 
of the scholars evince such marked aptitude and taste for scien- 
tific studies, as to make it clear that they would gladly avail 
themselves of further opportunities, and amply repay any trouble 
spent upon them.* 
As arranged for the girls, the instruction in the so-called 
“Domestic Economy” is as follows :— 
Girls. 1st Stage.—Functions of food, and its distribution by 
the blood ; the chemistry of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and _ ni- 
trogen ; the proximate composition of various kinds of food ; 
clothing and its uses, and the mechanics and chemistry of wash- 
ing, both as regards the person and the clothes. 
Girls, 2nd Stage—Food, its functions and composition, 
treated more in detail than in the first stage; and the physical 
and chemical principles involved in warming, cleaning, and ven- 
tilating a dwelling. 
Girls. 3rd Stage,—This comprises rules for health; the 
management of a sick-room ; the preparation and culinary treat- 
ment of food ; and lessons on expenditure and savings. 
As regards the expense of the scheme, the cost to the Liver- 
pool School Board was about 4100 for the stock of apparatus, 
and £470 yearly for the instructor and his assistants. In Bir- 
mingham more than 4200 has been spent upon apparatus, and 
the present annual expenditure is—Chief Demonstrator £300, 
two assistants £255, two juniors 10s. and 12s. per week, say £55; 
or a total of £61c. It is obvious that, under this plan, a maxi- 
mum of highly efficient teaching is obtained at a minimum cost, 
since the same demonstrators and the same apparatus are avail- 
able for a large number of schools—in Birmingham, at present, 
for 62 school departments. It may be objected that, although 
feasible in a large town, such a scheme is not practically useful 
in the number of smaller towns scattered over the country. 
Here, I venture to think, a lesson might be taken from the 
operations of the Gilchrist Educational Trust, for whom I have 
had the honour of doing much work during the last two or three 
years. The towns where lectures are to be given are grouped in 
fives, and on Monday and the succeeding nights of each week, a 
lecture (in my case always illustrated experimentally) is given in 
a different town. Hence, except in the very smallest and most 
distant places, there is nothing to prevent schcols in nearly every 
town from reaping the advantages of such a scheme as this. 
*In an article upon this same subject, but treated from quite a different point of 
view, in the ‘*‘ Modern Review” for July, will be found some remarkably interesting 
statistics of the Liverpool work,—W.L.C. 
