The student, after finishing his High school course, may matriculate at one of five Universities, of which four are denominational and one non-denominational. The matriculation of these Universities is almost identical, and the probability is that some time or other their whole course will be the same. When this happens, the educational system of Ontario may rightly be considered almost perfect.— W. H. H., in Penn. School Journal.

LOCAL GEOGRAPHY.

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Map-drawing cannot be too highly recommended as an important aid in the study of local geography. The effort that the pupil expends in striving to reproduce the map, helps to fix it firmly in his memory, because in order to transfer it to paper he is obliged to look carefully and examine closely. This is most important. The map should be photographed, as it were, in the mind. If you succeed in doing this, your pupils will be independent of map or book. Create in your pupils a desire to have their maps drawn as neatly and correctly as possible. By correctness I do not mean that every indentation and little curve should be reproduced, but a good, firm outline, so that any one looking at it will know what it is intended to represent. In beginning the study of a continent, for instance Asia, for the first lesson require a map of Asia. Do not expect too correct an outline the first effort. Be satisfied when the general outline is good. If a pupil has tried and failed, do not censure, but encourage and aid him, and keep him at it, until he brings to you a pretty fair representation. As the class take up each individual country of Asia, require a map each, as a part of the daily lesson. In this way the shape and outline are much better remembered, and when they bound orally they feel that they know that of which they are talking. The map is their own. They see it. It is in the mind's eye, and they are not depending on the book. Have your pupils draw from memory. If your class is small, you can send them to the blackboard; if large, the class can use slates.

Suppose the lesson is on Hindostan. Have the children draw on the blackboard or slates an outline of Hindostan, the teacher meanwhile watching their work. Then ask questions, as: 6. What is the shape of this country?" "What waters surround the peninsular

“What body of water east?" "South?" “What island directly south ? " " What natural division of land

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" West?

forms the northern boundary?” “What are these mountains called ?" "From what country do they separate it?" "What is the principal river in Hindostan?" "Draw it on the map, on your slate, and locate Bombay, Calcutta." Or the teacher can call on one member of the elass to go to the board and draw, the remainder of the class watching his work and correcting mistakes. The teacher, chalk in hand, may locate the different cities, and as he does so ask the name, and whether it be island or seaport, and why, and, according to the location, what branches of industry the people would probably follow. I think that as much useful, practical, business knowledge should be learned in geography as possible. If your pupils study geography in this way, it will certainly make thein more intelligent and thoughtful. If you wish to review your pupils in the countries of Asia, after having finished it, require a map of Asia. The drawing of the map will freshen their knowledge better than studying it, because they will draw it intelligently. It does not take much time. Your pupils can draw all maps at home, save those you ask them to draw from memory in class. A few minutes will suffice for you to criticise and point out the worst mistakes, and to offer such suggestions as you think they need.

It is an utter waste of time, and worse than useless to keep pupils trying to repeat boundaries and locations from memory. Let them remember the map, just as they remember a picture, and they will remember the boundaries, because, when the country is mentioned, they will immediately try to think how it looks and where it is, and the map is immediately before them in the mind, and they see the country and its surroundings. In learning the elementary part of mathematical geography, drawing will be found useful. Children may repeat the definitions for parallels, meridians, zones, and circles forever, but they will not remember any longer than while repeating. But if you have them draw circles, meridians, zones, parallels, diameters, etc., and make them for themselves, they will know and feel conscious of knowing the difference between a parallel and a meridian, a diameter and a circumference.

SILENCE never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made to reply to calumny and defamation.

Teach pupils to read for the thought. To this end use the newspapers in the class occasionally. Histories are also excellent readingbooks for this purpose.

THE “NEW PRONOUN."

I am somewhat surprised that any educated persons should find any difficulty of the kind you speak of in your notice of the above controversy in your March number. The awkwardness of using pronouns of both genders in the singular in connection with two antecedents of different genders, separated by a disjunctive conjunction, is not unavoidable if the pronouns we have in English be only boldly and properly used. Take the sentence quoted by the writer in the Atlantic Monthly: "Let every brother or sister examine himself or herself, and looking into his or her heart find out his or her besetting sin and resolutely cast it from him or her." I admit that this is not only awkward, but outrageously pedantic; and what is the remedy? Not certainly the invention of a new form for which there is no felt necessity, and not the substitution of the plural for the two singular forms, which, as the writer in the Ohio Educational Monthtly admits, is condemned by all grammarians and shunned by all good writers and speakers. Substitute the one plural for the two singular forms and how much of the awkwardness disappears ? “Let every brother and sister examine themselves, and looking into their heart find out their besetting sin and resolutely cast it from them.” Instead of being merely awkward and pedantic, this is utterly and hopelessly objectionable on the ground that it is based on a resort to the use of an · admitted solecism, for which, by the way, there is not the slightest necessity, and therefore no justification. The sentence should read, “Let every brother and sister examine himself, and looking into his heart find out his besetting sin and resolutely cast it from him." In English the masculine noun or pronoun is usually the generic term, and as such it includes both sexes; and it is no more awkward or pedantic to use

and "him as above than to say man is mortal,” when we mean to say that women die as well as men. very much astonished that any difficulty should ever be felt in the matter, and I hope the teachers of Canada will resolutely oppose any resort to either the invention of a new term or to a solecism in the use of an old one in order to get out of a trouble which exists only in the imagination of those who are imperfectly acquainted with the genius and use of our English tongue. — Correspondence of the Canada School Journal.

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BEAR with the evil and expect good.

ORIGIN OF UPLAND LAKES.

[The following article will interest all who are familiar with our numerous Wisconsin lakes:]

If not produced by expulsion of matter outward, or sinking of matter inward, these hollows must be the effect of some surface working agent. The sea planes away along the coast line, and the material goes to fill up ocean hollows; therefore the sea cannot be the agent, and any force in an ocean current is clearly out of the question over these scattered spots. Streams and rivers work along lines, form ravines and gorges, but never a more or less circular basin of great size in comparison with the stream or river; hence they cannot be the agents. The atmospheric powers — rain, snow, wind and chemical action weaer the rocks indeed, form tiny basins on almost every stone; but this is but nature's fretwork, the delicate carving around the sculptured, craggy tower or spire and smooth-scooped rocky front. Yet there is one surface agent remaining — the moving glacier. Most people are familiar with the proofs of former glacial action in Cumberland and Wales - proofs as clear as are those of the former greater extension of the Swiss glaciers. Now, by far the greater number of our tarns lie in true rock basins - hollows completely inclosed by rocky sides, which are, moreover, smoothed and grooved in a manner peculiar to ice-action. At the sides of many a tarn and lake you may see the ice grooves and scratches passing beneath the water, so as to leave no doubt whatever that ice has once occupied the rocky hollow. The question is, Did the ice-movement form the

, hollow? I believe that in most cases it did, and for these reasons: 1. The tarn lies almost invariably in the path of old ice streams or glaciers, as is proved by the direction of the scratches in the surrounding rocks. 2. They frequently occur at the foot of slopes more or less steep, or where the ice pressure can be shown to have been great. 3. The position of the deepest points in the larger tarns and lakes occurs almost invariably where, from the confluence of two or more glaciers, or the narrowing of the valley, the ice-pressure must have been somewhat increased. 4. The depth of these tarns is very slight as compared with the thickness of the ice which can be proved to have passed over them. 5. There is every gradation from a tiny, rockbound pool, glaciated on all sides, and which all will admit must have been scooped out by the ice, to the tarn or lake showing precisely similar phenomena on a larger scale. — Popular Science Monthly.

THE LARGEST ISLAND IN THE WORLD. - Immediately north of Australia, and separated from it at Torres Straits by less than a hundred miles of sea, is the largest island on the globe — New Guinea, a country of surpassing interest, whether as regards its natural productions or its human inhabitants, but which remains to this day less known than any accessible portion of the earth's surface. Within the last few years, considerable attention has been attracted toward it by surveys which have completed our knowledge of its outline and dimensions, by the settlement of English missionaries on its southern coasts, by the explorations of several European naturalists, and by the visits of Australian miners attracted by the alleged discovery of gold in the sands of its rivers. From these various sources there has resulted a somewhat sudden increase in our still scanty knowledge of this hitherto unknown land; and we therefore propose to give a general sketch of the island and of the peculiar forms of life that inhabit it, and to discuss briefly some of the interesting promblems connected with its indigenous races.

It has hitherto been the custom of geographers to give the palm to Borneo as the largest island in the world, but this is decidely an error. A careful estimate, founded on the most recent maps, shows that New Guinea is considerably the larger, and must for the future be accorded the first place. In shape, this island differs greatly from Borneo, being irregular and much extended in a north-northwest and southsoutheast direction, so that its greatest length is little short of 1500 miles; a distance as great as the whole width of Australia from Adelaide to Port Darwin, or of Europe from London to Constantinople. Its greatest width is 410 miles; and, omitting the great peninsulas which form its two extremities, the central mass is about 700 miles long, with an average width of 320 miles; a country about the size of the Austrian Empire, and with the exception of the course of one large river, an absolute blank upon our maps. - Popular Science Monthly.

SCHOOL WORK. -- Most of the pupils are young and tractable, and

. there is no excuse for poor discipline. You must secure and maintain good order; after that your best abilities will be needed to secure good lessons and recitations. Try to instill the idea into the hearts of your pupils that idleness during school hours is a (sin and cannot be toleerated, and see to it that younger pupils obtain right ideas concerning their duties. Have a cheerful word and a helping hand for your