I heard Saleem Effendi and Omar discussing | excellence, and it often happens that where English ladies one day lately, while I was in the majority of the pupils in a class acquit side the curtain with Saleem's slave-girl, and themselves satisfactorily, one child will be they did not know I heard them. Omar de- found who is quite "at sea." scribed Janet, and was of opinion that a man

From Chambers' Journal.
ODD THINGS FROM CHILDREN.

AN examiner in elementary schools often hears many amusing answers in reply to his questions. The following are examples of written composition from children in the upper standards. It must not be assumed, however, that in giving these quaint specimens, any slur is being cast upon the general character of the work in elementary schools; these are taken from many thousands of papers, a great number of which are of undoubted

"What is a member?" "A man on the School

Board,” was the answer. A surname was thought to mean "the name of a person you says sir to."

money is provided by the company to de- | any matches."
fray the expenses of the birth of members asked an official.
in pecuniary distress." A second demoi-
selle in commenting upon the proverb,
"Penny wise and pound foolish," wrote in
a mathematical sort of way, and it is feared
with some degree of misanthropy: "This
proverb clearly shows that for every wise
and good action a man does, he will com-
mit two hundred and forty foolish bad
ones."

One pupil brought Julius Cæsar before the public in the light of a wonderful inventor: "Julius Cæsar invented Great Britain, 55 B.C."- by writing that, a suspicion exists that copying is still in vogue. What a disaster a single mistaken letter deservedly occasions to the young plagiarist! "Ethelred the Unready was called that because he was never ready for the Danes. He use to entice them away from England by brideing them, but they use to come again and demand a larger bride."

Poor William Rufus's end was sadder than we wist, if we are to believe a youth, who says that "William Rufus was gorged to death by a stag in the forest his father had made to hunt the deer." Another writes: "Prince William was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine: he never laughed again." A small biographer of the Maid of Orleans writes: "Joan of Arc was the daughter of a rustic French pheasant which lived in the forest. . . . She did not like to leave her pheasant home, but after a while she went away." In the rainy season," says a little pedant, "the barren desert becomes animated with torrents of luxuriant vegetation." Before leaving the humors of boys, an oral question and answer may be given. "What do you mean by a temperate region?" asked an inspector, with a due emphasis on the word temperate. A little boy replied: "The region where they drinks only temperants drinks, sir."

Physical science is a dreadful stumbling-block to most youths. Asked to give the causes of sound, a sufferer wrote: "Sound is caused by the motions of the air, and is carried about by the German band." A curious dogmatizer, in "explaining" the origin of a draught, says: "A draught would be felt near the broken window of a warm room, because if you stood near it, you would feel it." A boy who appeared to believe friction as something tangible, perhaps a sort of newfangled firelighter, scribbled: "Friction is caused by the rubbing together of two sticks; it is very useful if you have not

In giving the names of the ten plagues, a respondent unduly enlarged the fourth, " Plague of flies, beetles, and moskeeters; "whilst the murrain among beasts was written by another, "Miriam among beasts."

The following two were lately recorded in the Schoolmaster. A class had been asked to use the word dozen in a sentence of their own construction. One of the answers ran: "I dozen know what to do." " Stability" was ingeniously defined, perhaps by an unstable memory, as being "the cleaning up of a stable."

As the science subjects of physiology and hygiene are making rapid strides in the elementary schools of this country, the following answers will illustrate to some extent the cramming system prevalent in these subjects. Here is what a young physiologist says: "The food is nourished in the stomach. If you were to eat anything hard, you would not be able to digest it, and in consequence you would have what is called indigestion. Food is digested by the lungs; digestion is brought on by the lungs having something the matter with them. The food then passes through your windpipe to the pores, and then passes off your body by evaporation, through a lot of holes in your skin, called capillaries. The gall bladder throws off juice from the food, which passes through it. We call the kidneys the bread-basket, because it is where all the bread goes to. They lay up concealed by the heart."

In reply to a question, "Why do we cook our food? one child replied: "There are five ways of cooking potatoes. We should die if we eat our food roar." A second pupil wrote: "Food digested is when we put it into our mouths, our teeth chews it, and our mouth drops it down into our body. We should not eat so much bone making food as flesh making and warmth giving foods, for, if we did, we should have too many bones, and that would make us look funny."

Dealing with ventilation, one student informs us that "the thermometer is an instrument used to let out the heat when it is going to be cold." Another writes, that a room should be kept at ninety in the winter by the fire, and in summer by a thermometer. A girl remarks: "When roasting a piece of meat, put it in front of

a brisk fire, so as to congratulate it." In reply to a question on digestion, one Here is a very learned reply: "Sugar is child wrote: "The food is swallowed by an amyloid; if you was to eat much sugar the windpipe, and the chyle passes up the and nothing else, you would not live, be- middle of the backbone, and reaches the cause sugar has not got no carbon, hydro- | heart, when it meets with oxygen and is gen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Potatoes is purified." Another wrote: "We should another amyloids." never eat fat, because the food does not digest." A third says: "The work of the heart is to repair the different organs, in about half a minute." A fourth child says: "We have an upper and a lower skin; the lower skin moves at its will; and the upper skin moves when we do." A fifth-standard child says: "The heart is a comical shaped bag.' Another in that class writes: "The upper skin is called eppederby, and the lower is called derby." While a third, giving the organs of digestion, writes, stomach, utensils [intestines], liver, and spleen.

In answer to the question, "Mention any occupations that are injurious to health," one reply was: "Occupations which are injurious to health are carbonic acid gas, which is impure blood." Another says: "A stone-mason's work is injurious, because when he is chipping, he breathes in all the little chips, and they are taken into the lungs." A third says: "A bootmaker's trade is very injurious, because they press the boots against the thorax, and therefore it presses the thorax in, and it touches the heart, and if they do not die, they are cripples for life."

they come and go from all corners of the earth; to trace village after village, and town after town, dotting the coast line as far as the eye can reach; to see the white steam of the distant railway rising like a summer cloud from among orchards, and cornfields, and fairy-like woodlands; to mark, far away, the darker smoke of the coal-pit and the ironwork hanging over the haunts of a busy human population; in short, to note all over the landscape, on land and sea, the traces of that human power which is everywhere chang

INOCULATING THE ELEPHANT. - Among the recent valuable discoveries of the famous French physician, M. Pasteur, is that of the vaccination of domestic animals for the prevention of the dire disease known as anthrax, or splenic fever. The marked success attending his system, in combating the rinderpest in Europe, encouraged Mr. J. H. Lamprey to bring the subject under the notice of the government of India, where no efficient remedy was known for this rapidly fatal illness, which annually carries off a large percentage of cattle of every kind. An order in Council hasing the face of nature, and then to picture an been issued, after the most careful investigation of the merits of the system and of the probability of securing its favorable reception by native proprietors. In order to carry out this object, some native Indian students, who have received their education at the Cirencester Agricultural College, are now undergoing a course of instruction at the Paris laboratory of M. Pasteur, and will shortly proceed to stations in India, to dispense the vaccine, which is applied to elephants as well as to oxen and other beasts. It is confidently expected that their labors will be attended with the same success that followed the introduction of the system into those countries where it is now in full operation, with an ultimate prospect of the total extermination of the most serious maladies, working great havoc among flocks and herds throughout the world. The elephant, in a domesticated state, is liable, as well as other animals in the service of man, to certain epidemic diseases.

earlier time, when these waters had never felt the stroke of oar or paddle, when these hillsides had never echoed the sound of human voice, but when over hill and valley, over river and sea, there had fallen a silence as of the grave, when one wide pall of snow and ice stretched across the landscape; to restore, in imagination, the vast ice-sheet filling up the whole wide firth, and creeping slowly and silently southwards, and the valley-glaciers into which this ice-sheet shrank, threading yonder deep Highland glens, which to-day are purple with heather and blithe with the whirring of grouse and woodcock; to seal up the firth once more in ice, as the winter frosts used to set over it, and cover it with bergs and ice-rafts that marked the short-lived Arctic summer; to bring back again the Arctic plants and animals of that early time, the reindeer, the mammoths, and their contemporaries; and thus, from the green and sunny valley of the Clyde, with all its human associations, to pass at once, and by a natural transition, to the sterility and solitude of an. other Greenland, is an employment as delightful as man can well enjoy.

Dr. Geikie's "Scenery of Scotland."

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What bird could know to bid the day good-Some part in sunshine and birds' welcoming