teachers. The general conduct of the schools has materially improved since our first visit to them several years ago. The efforts of the former Superintendent, Mr. Dressler, and the present one; Mr. C. Y. Kay, have greatly purified the whole atmosphere of the schools, which formerly revealed unmistakably the fact that Alliance was a railroad town. The order of the schools is good.

-THE Public Schools of Ravenna are under the charge of D. D. Pickett, who is now serving his third year since his return. He formerly had charge of the schools for nine years. In the five or six years of his absence the schools had three or four different superintendents. The schools are taught in three buildings, the largest of which contains eight school rooms. Catherine Oakes, a graduate of Antioch College, has charge of the High School. Mr. Pickett hears four classes from the High School, Mrs. Pickett one, and Belle Catlin, a pupil, two classes, one in Latin and the other in Composition. The following is a list of the other regular teachers in the large building, with grades and salaries:-A Grammar, Jennie Thompson, $800; B Gram., Clara Crane, $500; C Gram., Hattie King, $400; D Gram., Emma Griffith, $400; A and B Primary, Mrs. Hattie Beckwith, $450; C Prim., Jennie Elkhorn, $400; and D Prim., Mrs. C. Campbell, $450. In the West building, Emma Wing and Irene Hesler teach the D and C Primary and B Primary, at $400 and $450 a year respectively. In the Lincoln-Avenue building Mrs. Mary Mason teaches the B, C, and D Primary, at a salary of $400. There are two courses in the High School, one of three years and the other of four. Music is under the direction of Mr. Glover, who spends one day a week in the schools. The singing that we heard showed distinctly that excellent results are reached by the teachers. The citizens of Ravenna may well congratulate themselves on the general excellence of their schools, and the ability, fidelity, and earnestness of Superintendent and teachers. Since the large building has been painted it presents, with its beautiful grounds, an appearance unsurpassed by any other school building in the State.

-THE Public Schools of Hudson are all taught in one small building. Celia Hazeltine teaches the C and D Primary, Stella Gross the A and B Primary, and Mr. J. E. Bruce the Grammar School. Each has a salary of $400. A. E. Gladding is Superintendent. Notwithstanding the teachers work under great disadvantages on account of the fact that the building is not half so large as it ought to be, and some rigid rules adopted by the Board of Education, as to the number and duration of recitations in reading and spelling, the primary teachers are doing excellent work. We hope the time will soon come when the people of Hudson will see it to be to their interest to provide more room for their schools and abolish needless rules. If Mr. Gladding shall be given a fair opportunity he will render the schools much more efficient.

-THE Public Schools of Warren, Ohio, have since the beginning of the present school year, been under the superintendency of E. F. Moulton, who had previously brought the Public Schools of Oberlin to a high degree of excellence. The following is a list of teachers and their grades and salaries. Central Building:-High School, Mrs. Harmonia Woodford, $750, Nellie A. Darling and Ellen Beane, each $650; A and B Grammar, Miss E. C. Learnard, $800, assistants, L. R. Dawson and Miss E. Christiana, each $400; C and D Grammar, Emma R. Reynolds, $550, assistants, Misses M. M. Reed and Charlie A. Bennett, each $400. North Building:-A and B and C and D Primary, Nellie Bierce and Nettie Parrish, each $400. Market Street:-A and B Primary and C and D Primary, Addie B. Parrish and Mary C. McNutt, each $400. Park Avenue:-C and D Primary, Maggie Clark, $500, and D Primary, Louise Andrews, $400. Fulton Street:-A and B Primary and C and D Primary, Mrs. Lois Hull and Fannie Foote, each $400. Tod Avenue:-A and B Primary and C and D Primary, Olive Van Gorder, $400, and Ella Estabrook, $360. First Street: C and D Primary, Alice Shaffer, $360. Special teachers, A. J. Phillips, Music; and L. S. Thompson, Drawing, two days every month.

-WESTERN-RESERVE COLLEGE, at Hudson, is one of the colleges of Ohio that deserve to be more widely known. It is now fifty years old, its charter bearing the date of February 7, 1826, instruction beginning in September, 1827. There have been but four presidents, the second of whom, Dr. G. E. Peirce, served from 1834 to 1855, the third, Dr. H. L. Hitchcock, from 1835 to 1871, at which time Dr. Carroll Cutler, who graduated at Yale College in 1854, was chosen President. The college is now in excellent condition being supplied with professors who are an honor to American scholarship. There are few colleges that are supplied with laboratories so well furnished as the chemical and physical laboratories of Professors Morley and Smith. There are about thirty acres in the college grounds, on which are situated five or six college buildings. We were delighted with our recent visit to the college, becoming impressed when attending a faculty meeting with the fact that small colleges have a decided advantage over large ones in the care that an able and earnest Faculty can exercise over the progress and conduct of students. For further particulars we refer to four pages in reference to the college in our advertising columns. We believe it to be the duty of our good colleges to make their advantages better known, and thus lessen so far as possible the number of students that may be induced to attend inferior institutions that sometimes make great pretensions.

-THERE are graded schools in Ohio of the first order that do not appear in the tabulated list of such schools given in the annual Report of the State Commissioner of Common Schools, because the enumeration does not reach 500. One of these schools is at Wellington, Ohio, the most noted cheese market in the Western Reserve. The main school building, which contains five school-rooms and two recitation rooms, is a

structure of which the Wellingtonians may well be proud. The Superintendent, W. R. Wean, with his excellent wife, has charge of the High School, which enrols now 88 pupils, an unprecedentedly large number for a village, the average being 85. Of these 32 are non-residents. All but 15 take the regular course. We visited this school seven years ago, and found the condition of affairs so much better than we expected that it left a lasting impression upon us. This visit was not long after Mr. and Mrs. Wean had taken charge of the schools. Doubtless great improvements have been made within the last seven years. The A, B, and C Grammar Schools are taught by Sarah Nichols, Edith Dickson, and Mrs. Long, and the A Primary by Rebecca Nichols. Misses Emma Brown and Sarah Rex teach B Primaries in another building.

-WE are indebted to Prof. D. F. De Wolf for the following reference to several schools:

"Allow me to express in your journal in very general terms what I would like to expand considerably, regarding a few schools which I have recently visited.

1. Mansfield. John Simpson, Superintendent. What I heard was in Primary Arithmetic, English Grammar, Reading, and Spelling. The lessons were all characterized by a thoroughness and practical common sense, and by cheerful relation of pupil and teacher, which greatly pleased me. The halls and rooms are so well kept that it seems difficult to imagine an untidy house occupied by the coming woman. I even entertain the hope that the day may come when a lady will not be obliged to drabble her dress in tobacco filth in an American car. If so, our schools will have advanced civilization a discreet degree. Alas, can we hope that all our Public Schools are "Helping John" in this? The High School seemed in excellent condition, it being under the management of experienced, earnest, and scholarly teachers.

2. Ashland. Mr. Benjamin Jones, A. M., is well nigh a stranger to me. He certainly is not a stranger to the most ripe and studied methods of conducting a city school. I must be allowed to say that I think the school authorities wrong the youth of the County by excluding them from their City High School. A year or two under the careful and well-considered methods of instruction daily followed out in the Ashland Schools, would constitute the best possible preparation these young people could have for teaching in their turn the schools of the county. His methods of examination in all grades, and his language teaching in the High School, would repay any teacher a visit to his schools.

3. Massillon. E. A. Jones, A. M., is also doing a good work. A modest, earnest, Christian gentleman, a clear, ripe scholar, he inspires in his teachers and his pupils great personal respect and love. The results of his quiet energy are apparent in his whole system of schools. His teaching is thorough, and the whole atmosphere of the school-rooms tends to promote that culture which will seek excellence in school and out of school."

-A' MORE powerful argument can hardly be presented against our Ohio double-headed system of Township Boards and local directors than a recent decision of the Supreme Court in the Briar Hill (Mahoning Co.) School case. The township clerk of Youngstown Township, George J. Williams, refused to draw an order in favor of W. E. Werden, a teacher, for pay which the local directors certified was due him, apparently on the ground that the wages agreed to be paid him, $125 a month, was exorbitant. The District Court, consisting of Judges Glidden, Laubie, and Frease, decided against the teacher on the ground that such a contract was opposed to publie policy and void. The decision was reversed by the Supreme Court. The following is an abstract of the decision as rendered by Judge Rex:

"Where the local directors of a sub-district employed a teacher and fixed his salary at $125 per month, in case he alone should be able to teach the school to their satisfaction; otherwise the teacher to employ and pay an assistant, and such teacher performed the service under his employment, without the aid of an assistant, to the satisfaction of the local directors, who certified to the township clerk the amount due to the teacher under the contract. Held. That the township clerk cannot justify his refusal to draw an order on the township treasurer for the amount certified, on the ground that the contract under which the service was performed was against public policy, and void.

Leave granted, judgment reversed, and cause remanded for judgment for the relator on the special finding.'

When will the people of Ohio see the propriety of carrying on the schools of a township under the direction of a single board of education, without the aid of local directors who can contract for teachers as they please?

-THE following are excellent exercises in the reading of fractions. They should be read so that a hearer may without the aid of sight be able to rewrite them:

-THE importance of a comma is well illustrated in the following clause of the act of Congress in appropriating $1,500,000 to aid the Centennial Exhibition ::

"The appropriation hereinbefore made shall be paid in full into the Treasury of the United States before any dividend, or percentage of the profits shall be paid to the holders of said stock."

How many of our readers can see the points involved in the construction? The United States Circuit Court has decided against the government claim for the $1,500,000.

-WE are indebted to the President and Faculty of St. Xavier College, Cincinnati, Ohio, for a list of the questions prepared for the semiannual examinations. They fill nine closely-printed pages, and are full of interest.

-WE regret to see that our legislators at Columbus suffer themselves to waste time in the consideration of bills that are merely the result of spite work. A certain High-School Principal in the State being a good draughtsman, had prepared plans for several houses, and straightway the architects in order to save their trade secure the presentation of a bill' forbidding teachers, etc., having a salary of $1,800 or more from engaging in any other occupation. If the bill should pass we suggest that the said teacher's salary be reduced to $1799.999, and thus relieve him from its application. A Superintendent refuses to sign a certificate for a teacher who he declares was dishonest, and straightway a bill is presented forbidding superintendents, teachers, and members of boards of education from serving on local examining boards. Such temporizing is a disgrace

to common sense.

-THE following expression of opinion is from the Educational Department of the Central Nebraska Press, published in Kearney: “The Ohio Educational Monthly and National Teacher for January has sixteen pages of solid reading, eight pages of pleasant reading, eight pages of agreeable reading, and four pages of reading that a teacher always likes. It has been in existence twenty-five years and is a consolidation" in itself."

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-THE following from Dr. Adolf Douai, dated Irvington, N. J., January 27, 1877, explains itself:

"In a series of articles which the National Teacher published in 1875 and '76, Mr. R. H. Holbrook analyzed the various "Methods of Teaching Beginners to Read." Although he aimed at an exhaustive treatment of the subject, and mentioned books and methods that are exceedingly rare, he never mentioned A. Douai's Rational Readers and the method contained therein. The author of the latter after waiting for nearly a year for a continuation of Mr. Holbrook's articles, now wishes to learn the reason why no mention was made of his books."

"THE National Educator" comments as follows on Educational Notes and Queries:

"This is a monthly periodical which we take pleasure in recommending to our readers. The editor has conducted it with commendable zeal, and every number lays before the public a rich treat of rare and reliable information. We have come to the conclusion that if anything curious. or difficult can be answered or unravelled the editor of Queries and Notes can do it. Any one desiring a valuable periodical of this nature cannot do better than to send one dollar, the price of a year's subscription for Notes and Queries, to W. D. Henkle, Salem, Ohio."

-A TEACHER writes as follows-"I would ask through the columns of your magazine whether there is anything known in regard to the rings around Saturn, as to their composition, etc." Can some of our readers furnish the necessary information? In 1855, at the Providence meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Prof. Peirce took the position that the rings are fluid. An abstract of his paper is published in the proceedings of that year.