ing new methods without replacing old ones; that the decimal divisions, instead of being the greatest advantage of the system, are its most irreparable defect, and of whatever uniformity of division Nature and man are capable, it can never be expressed by the number ten; and that the mind can never think in decimal fractions, but invariably does think in fractions reduced to their lowest terms, so that they are as impossible to get rid of as the mind itself. The English system, the author shows, though, like all things in Nature, it bears the marks of imperfection, the decay of time, and the usages of civilizations long since passed away, yet in its essential elements embodies the wisdom and experience of ages, and is, in fact, the survival of the fittest.
English Composition "as it is Taught."—An idea of the value of instruction in English writing given in our common and preparatory schools may be gained from the report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric to the Board of Overseers of Harvard University. The committee gave out as a subject to the students for voluntary composition a description of the instruction and what they thought it was worth. Thirteen hundred and eight students in the college, Scientific School, and Radcliffe College handed in papers. These are classified and compared according to the advancement of the writers in the college course. The most noticeable feature in the papers corresponding with the freshman grade, taken as a whole, is their extreme crudeness of thought and execution; and they reveal various defects in the system of instruction used in the schools from which the writers came. The papers of the next grade were better and showed benefit from instruction received in the previous course, but with evidence of the deficiency in early elementary training still apparent. The work of the writers of the junior class (average age twenty-one years) was satisfactory, but nearly all of them expressed a decided opinion that the instruction given in the preparatory schools in written English is inadequate. All but three of the seventy papers from Radcliffe College were creditable in execution; but none of them indicated any special capacity for observing, or attempted anything in pointing out defects which might be termed a thoughtful solution of them. The papers from the Scientific School were, curiously, "noticeably inferior in nearly all respects." The papers from graduates of normal schools were likewise not what could be reasonably expected from students of such institutions. The chief value of these papers "lies in the indirect or unconscious light they throw upon a curiously heterogeneous system of almost undirected natural growth." They also reveal "what heretofore has been the great defect in the methods of instruction in written English in the common preparatory schools. It has been taught almost wholly objectively, or as an end; almost never incidentally and as a means." In the great majority of these schools "English is still taught, it would seem, not as a mother tongue, but as a foreign language." The committee believes, however, that, taken as a whole, the inferences and conclusions to be drawn from the papers "are distinctly and unmistakably encouraging, because they reveal wherein is to be found the root of the trouble, and indicate the steps now being taken to remove that trouble. It is remarked that while methods of instruction are often unsparingly criticised, schools and teachers are, as a rule, kindly spoken of.
The International Scientific Catalogue.—The proceedings of the International Bibliographical Conference of 1896 in London concerning the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, Dr. Cyrus Adler's summarized account of which has only recently been published, afford many points of interest. Among them was the discussion as to the definition of a contribution to science for the purpose of the catalogue. It was decided, with the help of a committee to which the conference had to refer the subject, to mean a contribution to the mathematical, physical, or natural sciences, "such as, for example, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, botany, mathmatical and physical geography, zoology, anatomy, physiology, general and experimental pathology, experimental psychology, and anthropology, to the exclusion of what are sometimes called the applied sciences—the limits of the several sciences to be determined hereafter." The discussion related
