Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/100

80 and confusion a Hindu school in full blast. The popular belief seems to be, (so far as we can judge from popular practice,) that as learning is received by the brain through the medium of the ear, the improvement made will be in a direct ratio to the strength of the impression upon the tympanum. The lesson thundered out by the teacher is re-echoed by the class, and as every pupil studies at the top of his voice, the din is prodigious. In the native schools the method is to learn certain books by heart, with very little reference to their meaning, and very little profit aside from as much reading, writing and arithmetic as will serve to carry the owner through the ordinary business of life. Geography is entirely unstudied, except some primary facts, such as the shape of the earth, which is said to be that of the lotus or water-lily, with seven seas and intervening mountains surrounding it; these seas are of various fluids; first, salt water; then sugar-cane juice, wine, melted butter, milk, curdled milk, and, beyond the last ring-like mountain, a sea of fresh water. Their teachings as to the size of the globe correspond with their views of its shape: thus the earth is four thousand millions of miles in diameter, with the