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chanism of the sentences they speak, write, and read. By working knowledge we mean not knowledge the be-all and end-all of which is to assign words to their parts of speech or to their proper pigeon-holes in a scheme of analysis, but knowledge such as enables a child to recognise a well-built sentence when he sees it, to tell how the arrangement of the parts contributes to the unity of the whole, and how the sentence affects, or is affected by, the sentences preceding and following it. We protest against the doctrine that grammar is of little or no importance and that English and composition can be taught without it. It is contrary to all reason and experience In reply the classical scholar may say, ' Look at me , I write a good deal, I never studied English grammar; you know my writing, what have you to say against it ? " We have nothing to say against it, but we should like you to tell us what time you have given to the study of Latin grammar, and the mechanism of the Latin sentence and to style as exemplified by Latin authors. It is no marvel that after so long a training under a competent Latin teacher you are able to write well. No one can practise translation from one language into another without learning the grammar and idiom of both. You have learned English grammar through Latin. Our children cannot learn it in this way learn it, however, they must if they are to leave school with ability to discriminate between what is good and what is faulty in expression, and to recognise instantly the factors to which the good or the faulty is due. This result ought to be achieved in our highest standard , but it is, in our judgment, great folly to attempt to achieve it without teaching the grammar of the language. The grammar exercise we have in view unquestionably affords a fine training in observation, in inductive reasoning, and in literary taste, and is, we think, deserving of much greater encouragement than it has recently received. A sound knowledge of the mechanism of his own language ought to be one of the chief ends of a child's education. Geography is, in the main, got up by the children from text-books, and, in a good many schools, without sufficient reference to the map. We frequently find children able to name the principal features of a country (towns, mountains, rivers,. &c.) without being able to place them in their relative positions the information got up from the text-book has not been localised Children should, we think, be well practised in drawing and filling in rough sketch maps and in reproducing them from memory Very few teachers, we regret to say, teach geography from maps drawn on the blackboard by themselves. Owing to the mass of details they contain ordinary wall maps are not easy reading even for adults, and to children they are perfectly bewildering. It is surprising to us that most teachers do not feel the difficulty of teaching from them. To render their teaching as concrete as possible some teachers make use of pictures taken from the illustrated journals. The practice is a good one, and we commend it to those who have not adopted it. The answering in physical geography is generally of poor quality The treatment of object-lessons and elementary science is, in a large number of schools, not in accordance with the methods of science. There is little exercise of eye and less of hand, there is little learning about things from a study of the things themselves, things are viewed not from the standpoint of an observer but from the standpoint of another's knowledge object-lesson books take the place of objects, and the children are the passive recipients of the information extracted by their teachers from the books. It is true a good deal of useful information is imparted to the children during the course of every year, but we cannot affirm too emphatically that the value of science teaching lies not in information, but in the habits of mind that are induced by the discipline, of patient and accurate observation. In the domain of physics many teachers find it difficult to devise simple experiments to illustrate their teaching. We have lately come across a useful little book written expressly for teachers, and containing a large number of such experiments " Science W r orks Simplified," by 0. E. Long, M.A., Training Master, Victorian Education Department. We commend the book to the notice of teachers. In but few schools are we satisfied with either the quality or the quantity of work done by the class above Standard VI. If the pupils of this class worked as earnestly and were taught as carefully as those of, say, Standard VI., they could do well at least three times as much as most of them now do. There is, we think, but one remedy for this defect prescribe a syllabus of work and, in the large schools, hold the headmaster responsible for the class. In the larger schools the preparatory classes are generally well taught, but in many of the schools taught by one teacher they get very little attention, and advance slowly The number of pupils over eight years of age presented for examination in preparatory classes is 1,270. The reasons assigned for so presenting them appeared to us to be, in most cases, quite satisfactory Order and attention are generally good, and the children are well mannered in a fair proportion of the schools. We sometimes see exhibitions of rudeness out of, but never in, school. Much more attention should, we think, be given to physical training. At present the girls of the standard classes get next to none. The Inspectors' Conference held at Wellington in February, though it did not, as some people seem to think it ought to have done, recast the syllabus and abolish examinations, was productive of great good. Most of the Inspectors were before personally unknown to one another, 'they were ignorant of one another's methods of inspection and examination, and the representatives of each district naturally acted on their own interpretation of the syllabus and regulations. Our meeting at Wellington changed all that, and we dispersed from the Conference feeling that our exchange of thoughts and comparison of methods had been most profitable to us and to the cause of education. Apart from this the most important result of the Conference is the transfer from Inspectors to headmasters of the pass examination of Standard I. and Standard 11. So far as the large schools are concerned, this change has relieved us of much unnecessary drudgery and given us more time for the oral work of the middle and upper classes. In the small schools the relief is not so great, for we are instructed to test Standard I. and Standard 11. in the pass work, and, the classes in these schools being small, the sample test cannot, in justice to their teachers, be applied to them. We have, therefore, to examine all the pupils in the most important pass subjects. Still, the change is of