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of our knowledge that the trained teacher (and not the artisan or cook) is the proper person to give the instruction. "If manual instruction is a part of education it must be in the hands of the educator. Experience has proved it easier for a teacher to acquire the necessary technical skill than for the artisan to become a teacher." In the training of our teachers in woodwork the classes established at the Normal School during the past few years have already done good service, while in cooking the School of Domestic Instruction has for some time been preparing the lady teachers, no fewer than five classes, with a total of seventy attendants, being in operation during the last few months. These should be sufficient; to provide at short notice the necessary instructors. The second and third questions contain the real crux of the situation, and provide ground for endless discussion. It is manifest that the maintenance of a true organic relation between the manual practice and the ordinary school work demands not only that the teacher shall belong to the ordinary school staff, but that he shall be the ordinary teacher of the class to be provided for. That is theoretically unassailable ; but at what sacrifice must the theory be applied, if, indeed, it could in every case be applied at all! We take, for instance, the senior assistants in charge of the Fifth Standard in one of our Christchurch schools, and we require them to take their pupils in groups of not more than twenty-four or twenty at a time for a two-hours practice in the workshop or kitchen. Now, the teachers' ordinary class is a class of sixty or seventy pupils. What is to be done with the bulk of their charges while they are so engaged ? Or how can such a school, on the boys' and girls' sides respectively, afford to give the time of its senior assistant for the purpose ? And, again, what becomes of the theory where, as in a suburban school, similar conditions are reproduced, with this complication: that the classes are mixed, and either the boys or girls must be taken by a teacher not their own, or where the only teacher possessing the necessary skill is ordinarily engaged in some other part of the schoool ? These are questions that we have to answer for ourselves, and after a good deal of consideration of the bearing of the theory in several types of schools we are driven to the conclusion that for general application the game gives little promise of being worth the candle. Questions (4), (5), and (6) depend partly for their answer on the decision of question (2), but are mainly to be decided from the economical standpoint. " Special and appropriate provision " in both departments of work for fourteen of our largest schools, ranging in attendance from three to twelve hundred, would require probably an initial expenditure of not less than £6,000 or £7,000, leaving upwards of a hundred and eighty schools without provision. Assuming that the Education Department is prepared to furnish the necessary sum for this purpose, we have only the question of the instructors to settle and the provision to be made for smaller schools. From the comments already made it is obvious that for large numbers of pupils our views are decidedly in favour of the employment of qualified certificated teachers as special instructors. These might receive a fixed remuneration, to be recouped to the Board from the capitation payable, and might be assisted in most cases by some qualified member of the staff whose services could be spared for the necessary time. For smaller schools we would differentiate between the claims of woodwork and cooking. The cooking we would confine to practical demonstration lessons such as could be conducted in an ordinary class-room provided with a fireplace furnishing the usual cooking facilities of a small household, and with the necessary utensils. For such work no capitation would be payable under the present regulations ; but we are quite sure that such lessons might be made to possess a very substantial value, and the advantages to be derived are sufficiently great to warrant some special allowance to cover the cost. All schools with a mistress on the staff competent to teach the subject should be so provided. As to the woodwork, in schools with a number of boys not exceeding twenty-four in Classes V. and VI., or, if under a hundred in average, in Classes IV., V., VI., but large enough to provide a separate teacher for Standards 11. and 111., the workshop practice by the teacher is not open to the objections urged, and special provision may be made accordingly where the master is duly qualified and desirous of taking up the subject. There must, however, be no compulsion in the matter. Unless the master believes in the value of the work as an instrument of education he had better let it alone. This is emphatically the opinion of Herr Salomon, the originator of the famous Swedish system, and it is indorsed by the report of the Irish Commission on Manual and Practical Instruction, which recommends, further, that " care should be taken to hinder the work from being taken up by any but really competent teachers." Personally, on the matter of finance we think that to make " special and appropriate provision " for these subjects in every one of the larger schools involves a needless expense. Christchurch and suburbs might well be served, for instance, on the north and south sides respectively by centres, which could be much better equipped than any separate school. At present, and for some time past, some seven or eight schools have been sending classes of girls to a central institution not under the Board's control, and, though the distance in some cases is rather great, the result in the great interest taken in the lessons by pupils and teachers and their practical value are found eminently satisfactory. The only difficulties met with concern the time-table, from the reluctance of schools to send their pupils in the mornings, and the adequacy of the capitation to cover the cost under the conditions required. The suggestions hitherto made have in view the primary schools only, but before concluding we are anxious to put on record our conviction of the need of better provision for continuation studies in intimate connection with the primary-school system. A central school in Christchureh, modelled somewhat after the fashion of the day polytechnic schools of London or the upper primary schools of France, is one essential requirement. This would serve as an elementary technical school, taking pupils at the close of their elementary-school course, and providing two or three years' further instruction largely on technical lines. Such a school could not, of course, be conducted without considerable cost, which might or might not be covered by the grants earned under the Manual and Technical Instruction Act, but there can be little question of its utility in the community.