is a vulgar and sordid inducement to study, and convicts the school that resorts to it of inefficiency in its legitimate and most essential work. It is, moreover, an injurious agency in education, as it is constantly used to stimulate students in false directions, and to the excessive cultivation of unimportant subjects. Our education is in a state of chaos in regard to the relative values of different kinds of knowledge. The waste of time and effort over comparatively worthless studies is something quite appalling, and it is everywhere aggravated by plying scholars with premiums for special attainments. Rich blockheads, with narrow notions and tenacious crotchets, smitten with the vanity of becoming public benefactors, go into the schools and found prizes and medals which set the students to racing in any direction which the whim or caprice of the donor may indicate. This evil is confessed, and has become so glaring that some institutions have wisely put a stop to such interference. But, as it is driven from the schools, it is taken up by outsiders, as we have seen in the intercollegiate contests that have lately come into vogue. Against this whole system the Philadelphia policy, as presented in Mr. Beckwith's report, is a tacit but powerful protest. To get things upon their real merits is a victory anywhere—to do this upon a great, unprecedented national occasion is a triumph—but there is no reason for adopting the principle in an exhibition of the products of manufacture that will not apply with increasing force to the management of educational establishments.
JUDGE DALY'S ADDRESS.
It is not easy to deal with the annual presidential addresses of Charles P. Daly before the Geographical Society. They are so fresh, readable, and full of novel and instructive matter, that there is a temptation to reprint them bodily. We have formerly spoiled them by summarizing; this year we publish in full the introductory portion, in which he glances at the achievements of geographical explorers during the third quarter of the nineteenth century ending in 1875, and shows what the state of things was at the beginning of that age, and what it is now. The main portion of the address, however, is devoted to an account of the researches, discoveries, and geographical work, of the past year. We are tempted to make some further use of Judge Daly's labors, which may incite our readers to procure the full address and read it themselves. Beginning with what has been done in our own country, President Daly sums up the results of the various exploring expeditions and surveys undertaken or aided by the Government, in the great Western, Northwestern, and Southwestern tracts of the continent. The results are varied and interesting. In the prehistoric section, on the ancient inhabitants of America, the evidence has been much extended in regard to the life of the old race of mound-builders. In reference to the antiquity of man on this continent, it is remarked:
"Prof. J. D. Whitney, from the remains found by him in California, is of the opinion that man existed there as long ago as the Tertiary period; that he was then the maker of instruments for grinding corn, as well as other implements of stone, and, as far as the examination of the imperfect skull which was found warrants a conclusion, that ho was, at that remote period, the same anatomically that he is now. These discoveries of Prof. Whitney's go to show that man existed during the Glacial epoch, which is confirmed after seven years' examination of the deposits in the Victoria Cave, in England, and by recent discoveries in the inter-glacial coal-beds of Switzerland. The Glacial epoch is computed by Mr. Croll, in his recent work, to have ended about 80,000 years ago; and Mr. Croll is not only one of the best authorities, but the one whose estimate of the time is the lowest."
The work of arctic exploration continues to be vigorously pushed, and with promising results. A point of interest
