eight days after the end of the month, all punishable absences to the notice of the magistrate, if he has not previously brought the parents to their duty by an admonition, or had the child fetched to school by the school beadle, to whom a small fee is due from the parent for his trouble. If, however, the matter goes before the magistrate, this functionary inflicts a fine, which may go as high as 30s., and if the fine is not paid the penalty is changed to one of imprisonment. In Saxony the law prescribes that the number of scholars in a class shall not exceed 60, and that the number of scholars to one teacher shall not exceed 120. In schools with from 60 to 120 children, therefore, if the commune is not rich enough to do more in the way of providing teachers than the law actually requires, two classes are formed, and a reduction of school time takes place for each, in order to allow the one master to conduct them separately."

The rural population greatly prefer the half-day school, as it is called, because they thus have the older children at their disposal for half the day.

Mr. Arnold concludes his valuable paper with three comments: 1. The retention of school fees is not a very important matter; something can be said for and against it, but the weight is in favor of their retention; 2. Keep improving our schools and studying the systems of other countries; 3. Organize the secondary instruction not only in the interest of that instruction itself, but in the interest of popular instruction. This last remark applies with peculiar force to education in the United States.

Mr. Arnold's report is free from official dryness, and reads more like an essay than a government document.

THE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF

PRUSSIA.

DESPITE all that has been said and written in this country during the past few years concerning the respective merits of the gymnasium and the realschule, there are very few educators who are able to describe accurately the character and relative status of the various educational institutions of Prussia. Therefore the following summary will be of value.

At the head of the education department in Prussia is the minister of education, whose duty it is to look after the administration of church matters as well. In each of the twelve provinces of Prussia is a provinzial-schul-collegium, having charge of the secondary schools. The elementary or primary schools are under the supervision of district boards, of which there are from two to

five in each province. Every commune is compelled by law to build and support a number of elementary schools sufficient to provide primary instruction for all the children of the community. Where the means are not sufficient, a grant is allowed by the central government. The assistance of this sort given in the year 1885 amounted to nearly 21,500,000 marks. The inspection of these elementary schools is very thorough; and every teacher, no matter what his grade, must have passed a government examination. In the towns a rector is placed over the teachers; in the country a local school inspector, usually a clergyman, acts in the same capacity. These rectors and local inspectors are under the surveillance of district inspectors. Gradually laymen are superseding clergymen as incumbents of these districtinspectorships. The district inspectors report to the district boards, and these themselves not infrequently overlook the inspectors' work. In the eye of the law, all schools, no matter what they teach, that have no berechtigung, - a term used to express the privilege of preparing students for an examination the passing of which shall absolve from part of the full period of military service, are elementary schools. All schools having berechtigung are classed as high schools, and are under the administration of the above-mentioned provinzial-schul-collegien; and in this way the high schools are very closely connected with the military system. After 1812, military service was made compulsory for every Prussian. The period of service in the standing army is three years; but those who have received a higher education have the privilege of serving one year only, if they apply to the authorities at the proper time. These are the so-called 'one-year volunteers' (einjährige freiwilliger). They receive no pay, and must keep themselves. In order to increase the intellectual standard of the army, and also to reduce expenses, the high schools have the right (berechtigung) to grant certificates for one-year volunteers.

These high schools are of various kinds, and include, 1°, the gymnasien; 2°, the pro-gymnasien, 3°, the real-gymnasien (formerly known as realschulen of the first class); 4°, the real-pro-gymnasien; 5°, the ober-realschulen; 6o, the realschulen ; 7°, the higher-burgher schools, and a few industrial and agricultural schools.

The pro-gymnasium is merely a gymnasium without the highest class, and the real-pro-gymnasium and the realschule stand in similar relation to the real-gymnasium and the ober-realschule. Those students who have satisfactorily attended for one year the second class of a gymnasium, real-gymnasium, or an ober-realschule, or the first class of a pro-gymnasium, a real-pro-gymnasium,

or a realschule, are entitled to a one-year volunteer certificate. In the case of the higher-burgher schools, and such others, excepting the above named, as have the right to grant the certificate, its acquisition is made to depend on the final examination at the completion of the course.

The following table will show the various studies pursued in the several kinds of higher schools, and the proportion of time allotted to each. The figures represent the number of hours per week - taking all the classes together - given to the subjects named :

as to positions in civil life are possessed by them, but these privileges are by no means the same for all.

The final examination certificate (reifezeugniss) entitles the holder to the following privileges: —

I. That of a gymnasium, 1°, to enter any university, and to compete in any examination for positions in the higher divisions of the civil service; 2°, to enter the technical high schools for engineering at Berlin, Hanover, and Aix-la-Chapelle, and to admission to the government examinations for engineering in all its branches; 3°, to

Singing and gymnastics are taught in all these schools after the regular school-hours, which are from eight to twelve, and from two to four o'clock, and Hebrew is similarly taught at the gymnasien to future students of theology.

It will be observed that the real-gymnasium differs from the gymnasium in teaching no Greek, in adding English to the course, and in reducing the time given to Latin. The time thus taken from the classics is given to French, German, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and drawing. The ober-realschule omits Latin and Greek entirely, greatly increases the instruction in French, and adds to the courses in English, drawing and the sciences. The higher-burgher schools have only a six-year course instead of a nine-year, and the studies occupy the times shown in the table. Some of these secondary schools have vorschulen attached to them. Into the secondary schools, children do not enter before the completion of the ninth year; and they are required to possess an ability to read easily Latin and German text, a knowledge of the parts of speech, a legible handwriting, ability to write a dictation exercise without too many mistakes in spelling, an accuracy in using the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, and a general acquaintance with the historical events narrated in the Old and New Testaments.

Besides the berechtigung for one-year volunteers, which all these high schools possess under the conditions named above, certain other privileges

enter the academies of mines at Berlin and Clausthal and the affiliated technical high school at Aixla-Chapelle, and to admission to the examinations for the first-class certificates in the departments of mining and smelting; 4°, to enter the academies of woods and forests at Eberswalde and Munich, and to admission to the higher examinations in this department; 5°, to admission to the first-class posts in the post-office, from postmaster-general downward.

II. That of a real-gymnasium, 1°, to attend lectures at a university with a view to matriculating in the philosophical faculty for the purpose of pursuing the study of mathematics, the natural sciences, or modern languages; 2°, to admission to the examinations mentioned under I., 2o, 3o, 4o, 5o.

III. That of an ober-realschule, 1°, to admission to the examinations mentioned under I., 2o; 2°, to admission to the same studies and examinations to which the certificate of a real-gymnasium entitles, on condition of passing a special examination in Latin.

IV. That of a real-pro-gymnasium, chiefly to unconditional admission to the highest class (prima) of a real-gymnasium.

V. That of a realschule, 1o, to nomination for civil-service posts in provincial administration and in the railways; 2°, to nomination to clerkships in the department of mines and smelting; 8°, to nomination as a land-surveyor; 4°, to admission

to examinations for apothecary, on condition that Latin has been an obligatory subject.

VI. That of a pro-gymnasium, 1°, to admission to the examination for apothecary; 2°, to admission to industrial technical schools.

VII. That of a higher-burgher school, 1°, to attend an industrial or technical school; 2°, to nomination for junior clerkships in the law courts; 3°, to admission to the examinations for art teachers; 4°, to admission to the high school for music in Berlin; 5°, to nomination for junior posts in the post-office.

The high schools are supported by the state, by the commune, or by both. If supported by the state alone, they are known as royal high schools. In the budget for 1885-86 the state subsidy for the high schools amounted to 4,712,118 marks.

THE SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

THE readers of Science will recall our announcement a few weeks ago, of the despatch of an exploring party to the head waters of the Mississippi River to examine and locate all the streams and lakes tributary to Lake Itasca. Our explorers have now accomplished their task, and we have received from them a detailed report, and a map of the entire region, which includes the basin of Lake Itasca.

This map, which we have engraved on the scale of about one mile to the inch, divided into sections corresponding with the U. S. land-office surveys, is presented herewith. Other maps are also presented for the fuller explanation of the details of the report.

Preliminary to the report, it is proper that we should make some statement of the considerations which led to the despatch of this party. There have been a number of explorations and excursions to the head waters of the Mississippi during the present century. Of these, we have a more or less accurate record of the trip of Morrison in 1804; of Schoolcraft in 1832; of Nicollet in 1836; of Charles Lanman in 1846; of the Ayers in 1849; of William Bungo in 1865; of Julius Chambers in 1872; of A. H. Siegfried and his party in 1879; of W. E. Neal in 1880 and again in 1881; of Rev. J. B. Gilfillan and Professor Cooke in May, 1881; and of Captain Glazier in July, 1881. We also have the maps of the government surveyors who spent two weeks in this township in September and October, 1875, and the paper of Mr. O. E. Garrison, contributed by him to the tenth annual report of the State geological survey of Minnesota, for the year 1880.

Of these explorers, we know that Nicollet carefully explored all the feeders of Lake Itasca; that

Chambers explored Elk Lake, which he called Lake Dolly Varden; and that Messrs. Gilfillan, Cooke, and Morrison, proceeding from the south, also visited the sources of the lake lying in that direction. Therefore, as to the general facts regarding the size and character of the basin of the lake, we did not hope to add any considerable amount of information to that already possessed. But of all these parties of explorers and surveyors, it is safe to say, that, with the exception of Nicollet and the government land-office surveyors, there has been little attempt at accurate investigation. Only these two have added any thing material to what Schoolcraft told the world in 1832. It is well, therefore, to note the difference in methods, of these two principal explorations of the Itasca basin.

"Nicollet was a trained scientist, but he worked under limitations; and very sensibly, also, with a limited and definite purpose. His work was mainly done alone, and his chief instruments were the thermometer, the barometer, the sextant, and the compass. Hence he gives us details of temperature, elevation, latitude, longitude, and the general direction of the parts he visited. He rarely used the chain - if, indeed, he carried such a piece of property. His details of distance were either estimated as in the case of a day's tramp or of an object within sight - or figured out by mathematical rules, as when he computed the length of a section of the river from the data of the latitude, longitude, and the direction from each other of a given number of points in its course. Hence his outline of the course of a river or creek, or of the form of a lake or pond, was only as accurate as might be expected from a trained explorer, whose eye was accustomed to take in and measure distance, direction, and form, on a large scale, and under a thousand varying conditions. In the matter of general relief forms, and the general trend and drainage of the country, he was, without doubt, the best equipped and most competent single explorer who has undertaken the study of our country; and his work has been of inestimable value to hundreds of thousands who never heard of his name. So far as relates to the subdivision of areas, and the surveying and platting of the surface of the land, considered as a horizontal plane, his work did not profess to have any accuracy or value whatever.

"On the other hand, this last is the chief, if not the only, object of the government land surveyors. Their instructions are limited and specific. They take no note whatever of relief forms: they follow up and trace only the streams and ponds intercepted by the boundary-lines of sections. In the matter of horizontal area, in the meandering

of lakes and navigable streams, and in the general platting of the land, they are proverbially reliable; but there is absolutely no account taken of elevation, and the drainage or trend of the land can only be inferred from the course and direction of the streams encountered in running the section lines.

'Nicollet's exploration was made in 1836, before a surveyor's stake had been set within the limits of Minnesota. The government surveyors of 1875 perhaps never heard of Nicollet, and certainly had no thought of supplementing or verifying his work."

In addition to the discrepancy noted above, another element of uncertainty has been introduced by the effort to maintain the claims of Captain Glazier as the discoverer of a new lake, unknown before his visit to the Itasca region in 1881. In order to maintain this claim, it is necessary to set aside entirely the map of Nicollet, to discredit the work of the government surveyors, and to ignore Garrison, Siegfried, Gilfillan, and every other explorer who has been to this region during the last half-century. With a dozen trustworthy parties on one side, maintaining the general accuracy of Nicollet and the government land-office map, and with Captain Glazier and his friends alone on the other side, it was not difficult to decide where the truth lay. But as no one had yet attempted to make an accurate survey of the topographical features of this region in the light of a government survey, and as Nicollet's work was simply topographical, without any attempt at accurate platting of areas, there was plenty of room for Captain Glazier, or any one else who chose, to come in and advance all sorts of claims. If, as was claimed by Mr. Pearce Giles on behalf of Captain Glazier, there was found three or four miles south of Lake Itasca another tributary lake, two miles long and a mile and a half wide, this certainly could not be Elk Lake, or any other lake laid down in the government survey. But if, described by another of his friends, Captain Glazier's lake was less than half a mile south of Lake Itasca, it was undoubtedly Elk Lake, - the same that Nicollet shows, with its three feeders, on his map deposited in the office of engineers at Washington, the same that Chambers visited and named Dolly Varden in 1872, the same that the government surveyors accurately outlined and named Elk Lake in 1875, - the same that the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan and Professor Cooke explored and named Lake Breck in May, 1881.

as

But it was not simply to prove or disprove the truth of Captain Glazier's claim, that we made this effort at an accurate topographical survey of this region. Nicollet has furnished us with a

map and a report of his explorations of the sources of the Mississippi, and these explorations have been a matter of history for fifty years. His maps have been public documents, accessible to everybody; and we believe, that, if his work is to be discredited, it should only be after the most careful and aceurate survey. The government surveyors also were charged with having entirely overlooked a lake of more than a square mile in extent, lying several miles south of Lake Itasca. If these government officers are not to be relied upon to give us accurate maps and honest service, it is time that the people should know it; it is time that geographers and map-makers should know it; and we knew of no way so satisfactory as a careful review of the work, both of Nicollet and of the government surveyors. And this review afforded us an opportunity to correct the one by the other, in case they were each reasonably correct in their respective fields of work.

We are glad to be able to report that the most careful running of the lines of the government surveyors have proved the almost absolute accuracy of their work. Our explorers were also able to detect and to account for some interesting minor inaccuracies of the land-office plat of this township; but it was well worth the making of the error to discover the remarkable natural phenomenon whereby this was fully explained. refer to the underground passage of the stream on the section line between sections 21 and 22, by which the government surveyors were deceived, and led into thinking that the stream did not pass out of section 22 at all, but kept north through the western part of that section.

We

It is also a cause of satisfaction to find the substantial accuracy of Nicollet's report and map of this region. There are, it is true, manifest discrepancies between his lines and those of the government survey. Lake Itasca is much broader, Elk Lake much smaller, proportionally on his map than on the map of the government survey, and the latter is found to be correct. A large share of this variation is due to the fact that Nicollet made his surveys by the eye entirely, and many of his drawings of the course of the streams and the contour of lakes were made upon birchbark, and only transferred to paper afterwards. But beside this explanation, our explorers also found reason to believe that Itasca Lake was at one time several inches higher than it is now; and if, on the other hand, Elk Lake was once of a lower level than now, the two coming together would account for the difference in form they exhibited in 1836, as compared with their present outlines.

According to Mr. Gilfillan, the Indians called

Elk Lake, Gabukegumag, which means, 'water which juts off to one side' of another lake; that is, branches or projects out from it like a finger from a hand. This would indicate, that, when this name was given to it, Elk Lake was simply an arm or bay putting out from Lake Itasca, and that with the filling-up of the channel between the two, and the lowering of the level of Itasca, the difference in level, which amounts to only thirteen inches, contributed to make the one lake distinct from the other, and a feeder to it.

We may briefly sum up the results of this exploration to be: —

1. The confirming of the substantial accuracy of the government survey.

2. The proof of the general correctness of Nicollet's report and map.

3. Nicollet's creek is still by far the largest affluent of Itasca, contributing about three-fourths of the regular perennial inflow of water. 4. It can be traced beyond the point to which Nicollet followed it to the lake that heads in section 34, Tp. 143 N., R. 36 W. 5th meridian; and at this point it is 92 feet above the level of Lake Itasca.

5. Following its windings, it is also the longest tributary of Lake Itasca; and therefore, 6. As the largest and longest tributary stream, and the one most elevated in its source, it is entitled to be called the upper course of the Mississippi.

7. Considerable changes have taken place in the nature of the streams in this region since the exploration of Nicollet, but these are all easily accounted for by natural causes.

8. The principal tributaries of Lake Itasca are fed by springs, artesian in their character, which have their reservoirs in the strata of the hills, and in lakes and ponds probably miles to the south and west.

9. There is no large lake directly tributary to Lake Itasca, five, four, three, or two miles, or even one mile south of that lake; and Elk Lake, whose shore is only a stone's throw from Itasca (350 feet), is the only tributary lake within the Itasca basin which has an area of more than 40 acres.

10. Elk Lake, with its feeders, is clearly shown on Nicollet's map of 1836-37. Its position is more accurately given than on Glazier's map; its distance from Itasca is much nearer to truth; and as to its size, Nicollet has drawn it about as much too small as Glazier drew it too large.

11. Captain Glazier has added nothing to what Nicollet's map presents to us. On the other band,

12. Glazier shows us nothing of Nicollet's creek which is the main tributary of Itasca; nothing of the eastern feeder of Elk Lake, which is the main source of its waters; nothing whatever that is not misleading and worse than worthless.

But what is the use of seriously going over this subject? Whatever of merit or accuracy there is in Captain Glazier's map is not in the slightest degree due to any thing done by him, or to any erudition possessed by his guide, Che-no-wa-ge-sic. His map, as he has published it, was drawn and engraved by Mr. G. Woolworth Colton of this city, and was made as near like the government surveys as Captain Glazier would permit.

The public will never be permitted to gaze upon the miserable travesty on geography and map-making which Glazier took to Mr. Colton to be doctored up and put in shape. But it will be interested to read Mr. Colton's account of how he became the innocent accessory of the Glazier fraud. The following is an extract from a published letter of Mr. Colton, to be found in the American canoeist for November, 1886:

"When Glazier came to me in the fall of 1882 with his very rough map, to talk of his claim and to give us the geographical data for adding his streams and lake to our maps, I saw at once that