boards are made up; another, in the fact that so large a proportion of incompetents are applying for positions, not forgetting the highest ones. It is not strange that, with such persons obtruding themselves, the teacher is looked upon by such boards as we have as "an impracticable man, useful enough to take care of boys and girls under rules established by lawyers, doctors, and business-men, but unfitted for participation in any of the serious work of the community." Mr. Bardeen, in looking for a remedy for the low state of the business, holds that it should not be thought to depend upon higher salaries or pensions for retired teachers, or fixed tenure of office—the teacher, if matters were in a proper condition, should be no more anxious about his annual reappointment than the bank-teller or insurance president, who is sure of it so long as he is this side of the St. Lawrence! But teachers should discriminate among themselves in favor of the most competent, should be men among men, should see to it that the differences in the results of good teaching and poor teaching are proved, and emphasized, and illustrated, and should labor to have the work of superior teachers recognized and secured. The average school board is a checker-board, where the only important consideration is that the square be covered, with a button, if the real piece is not at hand; it should be like a chessboard, where, "when a knight falls to the carpet, you do not replace him by a pawn, a rook, or a bishop; and you will make almost any sacrifice to retain your queen. One of these pawns may sometimes be a queen, but not till by long probation and many steps of progress it has won its position in the queen's row. There should be a queen's row in teaching."
The Value of the Congo.—A letter from Mr. Stanley, protesting against giving up the control of the Congo to the Portuguese, which was read in the Geographical Section of the British Association, gives a magnificent idea of the value of what that river is capable of contributing to the advance of civilization. "Despite every prognostication to the contrary," says Mr. Stanley, "this river will yet redeem the lost continent. By itself it forms a sufficient prospect; but, when you consider its magnificent tributaries which flow on each side, giving access to civilization to what seemed hopelessly impenetrable a few years ago, the reality of the general utility and benefit to these dark tribes fills the sense with admiration. Every step I take increases my enthusiasm for my work and confirms my first impressions. Give 1,000 miles to the main channel, 300 to the Kwango, 120 to Lake Matemba, 300 to the Mobimbu, probably 800 to the Kaissai, 300 to the Saukuru, 500 to the Aruwimi, and 1,000 more to undiscovered degrees, for there is abundant space to concede so much, and you have 4,520 miles of navigable water."
A New Zealand Ice-Cave.—The Whaugachu River, of New Zealand, rises in an immense, deep, perpendicular walled ravine on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, in which its descent is varied by a succession of waterfalls—"Horseshoe," "Bridal-Veil," etc., varying from 150 to 400 feet in height. "At one point, where the scene is hemmed in with towering precipices of 1,000 feet high and a glacier-slope in front, the gorge," says Mr. Nicholls, "wound in such a way that none of the surrounding country could be seen, and there was nothing but the blue heavens above to relieve the frigid glare of the ice, the cold glitter of the snow, and the dreary tints of the frowning, fire-scorched rocks. Right under the snowy glacier above us were wide-yawning apertures, arched at the top, and framed as it were with ice in the form of rude portals, through which the waters of the river burst in a continuous stream. We entered the largest of these singular structures, and found ourselves in a cave of some 200 feet in circumference, whose sides of black volcanic rock were sheeted with ice and festooned with icicles. At the farther end was a wide cavernous opening, so dark that the waters of the river, as they burst out of it in a foaming, eddying stream down the center of the cave, looked doubly white in comparison with the black void out of which they came. The roof of the cave was formed of a mass of frozen snow, fashioned into oval-shaped depressions, all of one uniform size, and so beautifully and mathematically precise in outline as to resemble the quaint designs of
