Mr. Stebbins was quite sure that he did not agree with Mr. Greene that grammatical attributes are mere forms. To use the pronoun he with reference to the moon is a grammatical error; but the reason is not to be found in the form of the pronoun or the noun, but in the fact that by grammatical usage moon is feminine. In Latin, every noun has six cases, but musa has the nominative, vocative and ablative alike in form. So also are the genitive and dative alike; here the case is not identical with form, but must be determined by the connection of this word with other words in the sentence. The fact that there are numberless relations is of little account.

The simple question is, What and how many classes of case relations are incorporated into the structure of our language?

Prof. J. W. Dickinson, principal of the Westfield normal school, read a carefully constructed piece of logic, with a general application to the mode of constructing a science of grammar.

Mr. T. H. Kimpton, principal of Chicopee high school, spoke earnestly in opposition to the positions taken by Messrs. Scott and Greene.

Mr. L. C. Warner, of West Newton, opened the discussion of the topic, "The proper use of Text-books." He said that he had recently been much impressed by what he saw and heard during a visit to the Blind Asylum in Boston. No text-books were used, but the pupils recited with marked fluency and correctness.

One difficulty in determining the proper use of text-books is found in the fact that these books are so faulty. Some instances were cited to show that boys who had stood well in their classes in Boston grammar schools, failed when set to solve comparatively simple problems in practical business matters. This deficiency was attributed to text-book training.

He would have no text-books in the primary schools, and would introduce them into the higher grades only so far as they were needed to economize the time of the teacher.

Mr. Hammond said the mode of teaching arithmetic without a text-book was the prevalent one seventy-five years ago.

Mr. E. I. Comins, of Worcester, confirmed the statement of Mr. Hammond. He said that he had the note-book used by his father, and probably in the school taught by Stephen Burroughs.

Mr. T. H. Kimpton was of the opinion that a good teacher could produce better results with his class by using a text-book than by mere oral teaching.

Mr. J. P. Payson said that more depends upon the character of the teacher than upon the presence or absence of the text-book. The general difficulty is, that teachers do not know what is in the text-book.

Mr. Hale, of Cambridge, thought that in the case of the blind pupils, something was due to the well-known fact that they grasp more quickly, and retain more surely what is taught them orally. Children should be taught to use textbooks. Good teachers do not depend entirely upon books, nor allow scholars to do it. The poorest teaching in grammar he ever saw was in a school where for years it was taught without text-books. The best results are secured by throwing scholars upon their own resources.

The President said: If speech is to be substituted for print, it should be good speech.

Mr. L. Dunton, principal of Boston Normal School, said: Results are often attributed to wrong causes. We often assign to stupidity, to wrong methods, or to bad teaching, what belongs only to immaturity of intellect. To decide what is the proper use of the text-book, we must find out whether the pupil is competent to use the book well.

All the knowledge he had of the branches commonly taught in schools, up to the time when he was twenty years old, he obtained from text-books.

Mr. Stetson, of Auburn, Maine, said that one mode of abusing text-books is to use them simply as a means of cultivating verbal memory. One great advantage possessed by text-books upon mechanical drawing is this, that the pupil is required to show by his works whether he has correctly apprehended the statements of the book.

The Committee on Resolutions, through their chairman, Prof. B. F. Tweed, reported the following:

Resolved, That the thanks of the association be tendered to the School Board of the city of Worcester for the free use of the high-school building for our meetings.

To the railroads which have given free return tickets.

To those hotel-keepers who have accommodated our members at reduced

rates.

To the gentlemen who have, by essay or address, or in any other way, contributed to the interest and usefulness of our meeting.

Mr. T. H. Kimpton extended to the members of the Association a cordial invitation to meet with the Hampden County Teachers' Association at their annual gathering the third week of next May.

The Association then sang the doxology to the tune of Old Hundred, and adjourned sine die.

A RECENT writer, who has been paying a visit to the country of Shamyl, the Circassian chief, is responsible for the statement that there are many towns in its vicinity of equal, if not greater importance, than Astrakhan, which occupies so prominent a position on most maps. The cultivated teacher should pay more attention to the statements of well-informed travellers, than to the maps in our common geographies, which may in many cases be reprints of old maps.

3

THE WORD DUNCE.

"THERE is a little word not in uncommon use among us, an inquiry into the pedigree of which will lay open to us an important page in the intellectual history of the world. We may all know what a 'dunce' is, but we may not be as well acquainted with the quarter whence the word has been derived. Certain theologians in the Middle Ages were termed schoolmen; being so called because they were formed in the cloister and cathedral schools which Charlemagne had founded, — men not to be lightly spoken of, as now they often are by those who never read a line of their works, and have not a tithe of their wit; who moreover little guess how many of the most familiar words which they employ, or misemploy, have descended to them from these. Real,' 'virtual,' 'entity,' 'nonentity,' 'equivocation,' all these, with many more unknown to classical Latin, but which now have become almost necessities, were first coined by the schoolmen, and passing over from them into the language of those more or less interested in their speculations, have gradually filtered through the successive strata of society, till now they have reached, some of them, to quite the lowest. At the revival of learning, however, their works fell out of favor; they were not written in classical Latin; the form in which their speculations were thrown was often unattractive; it was mainly in their authority that the Romish church found support for many of its periled dogmas; on all which accounts, it was considered a mark of intellectual progress and advance to have broken with them and altogether thrown off their yoke. Some, however, still clung to these schoolmen, and to one in particular, Duns Scotus, the great teacher of the Franciscan order; and many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position by an appeal to its great doctor, familiarly called Duns; while the others would contemptuously rejoin, 'Oh, you are a Dunsman,' or more briefly, 'You are a Duns,' — or, ‘This is a piece of dunsery'; and inasmuch as the new learning was ever enlisting more and more of the genius and scholarship of the age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn. Remember ye not,' says Tyndall, 'how within this thirty years and far less, the old barking curs, Dunce's disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?' And thus from that long extinct conflict between the old and the new learning, that strife between the mediæval and the modern theology, we inherit the words 'dunce' and 'duncery.' Let us pause here for a moment to confess that the lot of poor Duns was certainly a hard one, who, whatever may have been his merits as a teacher of Christian truth, was certainly one of the keenest and most subtle-witted of men. He, the 'subtle doctor' by pre-eminence, for so his admirers called him, could hardly have anticipated, and as little as any man deserved, that his name should be turned into a by-word expressive of stupidity and obstinate dulness. This, however, is only one example of the curious fortune of words."- Trench's Study of Words.

INTELL

NTELLIGENCE.