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SWITZERLAND

Basel (town and land) arc mainly Protestant, while Luzern, Fribonrg, Ticino, Valais and the Forest Cantons are mainly Catholic. The Roman Catholic priests are much more numerous than the Protestant clergy, the former comprising more than 6,000 regular and secular priests. They are under five bishops, viz., of Basel and Lugano (resident at Solothurn), Chur, St. Gallen, Lausanne and Geneva (resident at Freiburg), and Sitten (Sion), all of them immediately subject to the Holy See. The government of the Protestant Church, Calvin istic in doctrine and Presbyterian in form, is under the supervision of the magistrates of the various cantons, to whom is also entrusted, in the Protestant districts, the superintendence of public instruction.

Instruction.

In the educational administration of Switzerland there is no centralization. Before the year 1848 most of the cantons had organized a system of primary schools, and since that year elementary education has steadily advanced. In 1874 it was made obligatory (the school age varying in the different cantons), and placed under the civil authority. In some cantons the cost falls almost entirely on the communes, in others it is divided between the canton and com- munes. In all the cantons primary instruction is free. In the north-eastern cantons, where the inhabitants are mostly Protestant, the proportion of the school-attending children to the whole population is as one to five ; while in the half- Protestant and half- Roman Catholic cantons it is as one to seven ; and in the entirely Roman Catholic cantons as one to nine. The compulsory law has hitherto not always been enforced in the Roman Catholic cantons, but is rigidly carried out in those where the Protestants form the majority of inhabitants. In every district there are primary schools, and secondary schools for youths of from twelve to fifteen. Of the contingent for military service in 1910, •1 per cent, could not read, and "3 per cent, could not write.

The following are the statistics of the various classes of educational insti- tutions for 1910-11 :—

Infant schools

Primary schools .... Secondary schools .... Middle schools (preparatory). Normal schools (private and public)

Schools

Teachers

1,153

4,812

656

43

49

1,505

12,485 2,118 1,128

584

Pupils

5,449

544,152

57,570

14,793

3,559

There were also improvement schools with 41,464 pupils, schools for girls with 1,847, gymnasia wdth 7,847. In 1911-12 there were commercial schools with altogether 3,937 pupils ; industrial schools with 4,951 pupils; technical schools with 1,353 pupils; 448 schools for the instruction of girls in domestic economy and other subjects ; agricultural schools with 1,161 pupils; schools for horticulture, for viticulture, for arboriculture, and for dairy management. In 1910, 8 institutions for the blind had 326 inmates ; 15 for the deaf and dumb had 736 ; 25 for the feeble-minded had 1,391. In the 37 reformatories of Switzerland in 1910, there were 1,527 children under instruction. The expenditure on instruction in 1911 was: by the State, 41,800,000 francs; by the communes, 44,600,000 francs; total, 86,400,000 francs.

There are seven universities in Switzerland. These universities are organised on the model of those of Germany, governed by a rector and a senate, and divided into four 'faculties ' of theology, jurisprudence, philo-