were similar. Prof. Fuchs has meanwhile published in the “New Free Press” (morning edition, 20th May, 5th year) an article in favour of Vertical Writing, in which among other things he says that the expectation that Sloping Writing in oblique middle position must allow an equally good bodily posture as Vertical Writing in straight middle-position has not been fulfilled. “Theoretically the two ways of writing should be almost equivalent, and both ought to be capable of being produced with equal ease in the correct posture of body.
“But all theory is vague; of this our recent school-visit ought to have convinced us.”
The Middle Franconia Medical Council is well acquainted with the fact that the author as early as 1880 had declared the oblique middle-position incompatible in the long run with an erect posture in sitting, on theoretical grounds, and on account of the necessity of pursuing the obliquely rising line with the eye. On the 10th of May Bayr received a visit from Max Gruber, Professor of Hygiene, who delivered a lecture at the next sitting of the Supreme Council of Health on the very favourable impression which the posture in Vertical Writing made upon him, and moved that a commission be entrusted with the testing of Vertical Writing.
Accordingly Herr Albert, Court Councillor, Professor Gruber, and Dr. von Wiedersperg from the Supreme Council of Health, and also Prof. E. Fuchs, Prof. von Reuss and Prof. Lorenz were named extraordinary members of this commission, which then on the 4th of June, with the accession of Dr. Immanuel Kusy, Ministerial Councillor and Secretary Adviser in the Ministry of the Interior, inspected the vertically-writing children in Bayr’s school and expressed themselves in terms of praise. Meanwhile, however, as the “Journal of Education and Instruction” (No. 8, 2nd year) informs us, Herr Albert, Court Councillor, has already in his lectures declared for Vertical Writing.
In July, Vertical Writing with the Roman character stood on the order of the day of the tenth Vienna District Teachers’ Conference.
The speakers had all taken an opportunity either of testing Vertical Writing themselves in their own classes or of studying it with Bayr. Theses were heard at all the conferences in favour of Vertical Writing, and were accepted, with exception of the tenth district, where the thesis on Vertical Writing was defeated by 66 votes against 62.
Finally a few more reports received by letter on Bayr’s vertically-writing classes may be mentioned. Principal Bayr says with regard to the experiments in the fifth class, part of which writes perpendicularly, part obliquely (with oblique middle-position): “The governess lays great stress on the erect posture of the children.”
