> . 
SCIENCE. 
348 
Giinther (1870, ‘Catalogue of fishes,’ viii. p. 68). It 
is probable that by one or the other of these authori- 
ties you have been misled. ‘ Muraenopsis’ was given 
to the batrachian by Fitzinger {1843, ‘Systema rep- 
tilium,’ p. 34) as a substitute for Amphiuma Garden, 
1821. Subsequent writers have limited the genus 
Muraenopsis to the species with three toes, retain- 
ing in Amphiuma that with two. Examination 
of a considerable number of specimens shows that 
about one of every five individuals of tridactyla, 
from the same locality, has less than the normal 
number of three toes to each foot. For this reason 
it seems as if the species is not sufficiently distinct 
from the two-toed, Amphiuma means, to be entitled 
to rank in a different genus. In this view the genus 
Muraenopsis should be suppressed, and the name 
placed as a synonyme for Amphiuma. 
S. GARMAN. 
Mus. comp. zo6l. 
[The writer of the review above mentioned must 
confess to a blunder. Not having a copy of Le 
Sueur’s paper at hand, he trusted to the quotations 
made by Kaup and Ginther. The former writer, as 
above stated, expressly adopts the genus Muraenopsis 
from Le Sueur. | 
STUDY AT HOME. 
In discussing the value of a new plan for 
making men wiser and better, the thing to do 
is not to compare it with other plans in suc- 
cessful operation, with which it does not pro- 
pose to interfere, but simply with the state of 
things in which it is absent. No one pretends 
that personal instruction is not of value, or 
that the urgent stimulus and vivid directness 
of a living teacher and a viva voce explanation 
can ever be replaced by the slow medium of 
letters. When an organized effort was made 
to introduce home study on a large scale, it 
was on account of the patent fact that there 
are many young people, and many people no 
longer young, who are not in a condition to 
go to school, and to whom, nevertheless, the 
systematic study of some subject in which they 
take an interest would be a benefit and a de- 
light. The difference between a sporadic effort 
to do a little solid reading by one’s self,.con- 
stantly interrupted by flagging interest and by 
difficulties too hard to overcome, and a regular 
correspondence with some one who is able and 
willing to lend encouragement and aid, is very 
great. If the enthusiasm for this sort of work 
should become so wide-spread as to keep large 
numbers of students from giving themselves a 
regular course of instruction in school and col- 
lege, it would be time to consider the evils of 
the plan; but of this there is little danger at 
present. 
Ten years ago some reports of an English 
organization, called the ‘ Society for the encour- 
agement of home study,’ fell into the hands of 
a group of missionaries in Boston; and they 
were immediately inspired with a desire to 
work out the idea suggested by the title. An 
exchange of letters with the English secretary 
was of very little assistance in the development 
of the American plan. The English society 
offered no correspondence, but simply sketched 
out courses of reading, and plans for botanical 
and art work, to be carried on without assist- 
ance for a year, after which the students were 
expected to go to London for a competitive ex- 
amination with prizes. Inthe autumn of 1873, 
the ‘Society to encourage studies at home ’ 
was established by a committee of ten persons, 
six of whom carried on the correspondence 
with the forty-five students who offered them- 
selves for instruction in the course of the year. 
Only two points of method were settled at the 
beginning; namely, that there should be a 
regular correspondence, and that there should 
not be competitive examinations. Later the 
plan was developed of making the students take 
notes from memory, at the beginning of each 
day’s work, of the reading of the day before, 
and send to the appointed teacher at the end 
of each month a few sample pages of their daily 
notes, and a full abstract, written from mem- 
ory, of their month’s work. ‘There are also 
frequent examinations; and by this means the 
students are divided, at the end of the year, 
into a first, second, and third rank. ‘The plan 
of giving certificates, based upon the results of 
an annual examination, was abandoned after 
two years’ trial. The annual fee charged is 
merely a nominal one, —two dollars at first, 
and afterwards three, — but it has been suffi- 
cient from the beginning to cover all the ex- 
penses of paper, postage, the printing of the 
necessary circulars, the salaries of the assist- 
ants to the secretary and the librarian, and for 
the last two years the rent of the rooms on 
Park Street, Boston, where the society has its 
headquarters. 
The work of the teachers is, of course, 
a labor of love. In numbers the society 
had a very rapid growth for the first four 
years of its existence, and since then it has 
remained nearly stationary. In 1880 over 
eleven hundred students entered, of whom 
seventy-one per cent persevered throughout the 
year, and twenty-six per cent were excused for 
sufficient reasons. The number of teachers is 
about two hundred. History, science, and art, 
French, German, and English literature, are 
the subjects taught ; and the proportion of stu- 
dents in each subject remains almost constant 
year after year. More remarkable still, the © 
subjects divide themselves into three groups of 
two subjects each, which keep nearly abreast 
