Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/147

Rh modern course in secondary schools has been made as solid as the classical. No elementary, superficial, and hasty treatment of a long series of subjects can possibly commend itself to the educated community as likely to produce the good effects of the consecutive, thorough, and prolonged treatment of a smaller group. We shall never know, for example, whether Latin and history are equally well adapted to secure the suitable development of the human mind until we have given history the same chance that we have given Latin."

The Coals of Missouri.—All the coals of Missouri, Mr. Arthur Winslow, State Geologist, informs us, are bituminous, except the cannel coals, which are found in local and small deposits. The bituminous coals have, as a rule, a high percentage of ash, as compared with the best bituminous coals; they are comparatively soft, suffer much from excessive handling or long exposure, and almost always carry pyrites. Most of the mines are less than two hundred feet deep. The Randolph shaft, in Ray County, is four hundred and twenty feet deep to the coal, and is one of the deepest. The deepest operated—which is, exactly speaking, within the State is near Hamilton, in Caldwell County, and is about five hundred feet deep. At Leavenworth, Kansas, along the State line, however, a coal bed of only twenty-two inches is entensivelyextensively [sic] worked at depths varying from seven hundred to eight hundred feet. For markets, the Western bituminous coal field, of which the Missouri mines are a part, besides the home market, looks chiefly to a great area in Nebraska, Kansas, the Indian Territory, and Texas, which is destitute of coal, and in which the supply of wood is small. Its only competitors are in the deposits of Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico; but they can furnish only limited supplies.

Sanitary Inspection of Schools.—The English Education Department has started upon a detailed inquiry into the sanitary condition of the schools, and with this purpose has issued forms to the inspectors embodying questions bearing on that subject, to be filled up by them. The thirteen questions relate, for the most part, to the site, structure, and sanitation of the schoolrooms inspected. The inspectors are required, in noting auy matters calling for alteration, to press for immediate attention to them, and are given power to use their discretion in enforcing changes. They are also instructed to bring under notice of the managers and the department serious defects in the convenience of the schoolrooms for teaching purposes or in their sanitation, with a view to their immediate removal. The objects of this action are to find, for the purpose of applying adequate means to secure efficiency, how far each existing school falls short of modern requirements, and to furnish a' complete statistical record of the condition of school premises throughout the country. Other subjects concerning which inquiry might be made with advantage have been suggested, among which are the lighting of the rooms; the most appropriate closets and their number; the most suitable arrangements for washing—whether basins shall be continued or they shall be done away with and replaced by a stream of running water, affording a means of obviating the danger of communicating parasitic and contagious diseases; and the physical and mental condition of the pupils.

The Lichtenthaler Collection.—Illinois Wesleyan University has obtained by bequest the valuable collection of shells, ferns, and algæ gathered by the late George W. Lichtenthaler, of Bloomington, Ill., which has been placed in its museum as the George W. and Rebecca S. Lichtenthaler collection. It includes shells—between six thousand and eight thousand species, with twenty-five thousand specimens; crustaceans, echinoderms, corallines, corals, fossil shells and plants, minerals, four hundred species of ferns, and eight hundred species of marine algae. Several cases are filled with gastropod shells cut longitudinally so as to show their spiral structure, and the highly polished specimens are very numerous. The ferns comprise a nearly complete collection of North American species, a complete collection from the Hawaiian Islands, and many from India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Europe. Mr. Lichtenthaler, one of the best known of American conchologists, and one of the early