some cases allowances past due have been paid only on condition of immediate resignation.

For regulations as to assistant-substitutes absent from duty, see page 384 hereof, §§ 1, 2, 3, 4.

III. ASSISTANTS AND SUCCESSORS.

1. Parties elected assistants and successors must undergo examination, and are in other respects treated on the same footing as schoolmasters.

IV. ORDINARY ASSISTANTS.

1. The Trustees do not interfere with parties employed by schoolmasters to aid them in the management of their schools in the character of ordinary assistants.

2. In some cases, however, where schools were found to be inefficiently taught, the Trustees have insisted on a schoolmaster obtaining the services of an able assistant, under pain of forfeiture of allowance in case of refusal.

3. The Trustees do not generally give any pecuniary aid towards the assistants' salaries in such cases, the only occasions on which they have given such aid having been where an assistant has been required in consequence of the incumbent being in bad health, or too old for the full discharge of his duties.

V.-TEMPORARY ASSISTANTS.

The following regulations were adopted by the Trustees in regard to temporary assistants appointed to take charge of schools during the absence of the schoolmaster or assistant-substitute at college :

1. By the general rule any schoolmaster who shall absent himself from duty to attend College, or for any other cause, not involving physical disability, suffers abatement proportionate to the duration. of his absence. And that regulation was, by the Trustees' Minutes of 30th December 1851, extended (after the end of the session of College in spring 1852) to assistant-substitute teachers, who are to suffer abatement on the ground of absence, in the same way as if they were schoolmasters fully inducted.

2. If any schoolmaster or assistant-substitute shall be absent at College during two or more winters in succession, he shall, for every

winter in succession after the first, forfeit his allowance for the whole year.

3. Every schoolmaster and assistant-substitute proposing to attend College, shall give notice of his intention to the Trustees' clerk at least a month before the commencement of the session, and if such notice is not given in any case the party shall be held to have forfeited his allowance for the whole year.

4. In the case of any teacher forfeiting his allowance for the period of absence only, and not for the whole year, the Trustees will be ready to consider any application to have the forfeited portion of the allowance, or a part of it, made available to the temporary assistant officiating in the absence of the schoolmaster or assistantsubstitute, provided the following regulations shall be observed, viz. :—

(1.) Any schoolmaster, or assistant-substitute, intending to go to College, shall, along with the notice of his intention, transmit a copy of the testimonials of the person who is to teach during his absence, and state the amount of the allowance (the same not being less than at the rate of £1 per week) which he proposes to give to such temporary assistant.

(2.) The qualifications of the temporary assistant, and his discharge of the duties, shall be satisfactory to the minister of the parish and the Presbytery of the bounds, of which evidence shall be produced in order to qualify a temporary assistant to receive any allowance from the Trustees, the report of the Presbytery shall be so specific and minute as to enable the Trustees to judge of the actual condition of the school, and, in particular, to judge of the degree of its efficiency as compared with its condition under the immediate charge of the absent teacher.

(3.) If the Trustees shall be satisfied with the whole arrangement, and that the temporary assistant has been diligent and successful, they will, in their discretion, award to him (to be paid upon a discharge by the schoolmaster) that part of the annual allowance which the incumbent or assistant-substitute would himself have received if not absent, or such part thereof as the Trustees may think fit.

(4.) It has been the practice of the Trustees, so invariable as to amount to a regulation, not to allow a temporary assistant to receive the forfeited allowances unless evidence be produced of his having had a University education, or of his having obtained a Government Certificate of Merit of the first class, second year.

APPENDIX V.

"THE REVISED CODE."

STATEMENT for THE TRUSTEES of the DICK BEQUEST in reference to the probable effects of the CLAUSE regarding ANNUAL ENDOWMENTS in the "REVISED CODE," if applied to the working of the Bequest under their Management.

The funds under the management of the Trustees, which consist of the residuary estate of the late James Dick, Esquire, sometime of Finsbury Square in the city of London, were, by his Last Will and Testament, specially directed to be applied "to the maintenance and assistance of the Country Parochial Schoolmasters as by law established in the three counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray, excluding the royal burghs."

Mr. Dick, in dedicating the bulk of his fortune, which amounts at the present time to £118,787, 11s., exclusive of forfeited and reserved allowances, to this benevolent purpose, laid down the following, inter alia, as the principles to be observed by his Trustees in administering the funds, viz. :

First, "That the Income of the Fund be applied in such manner as not in any manner to relieve the Heritors or other persons from their legal obligations to support Parochial Schoolmasters, or to diminish the extent of such support, and so as not to interfere with the rights or powers of Heritors and Presbyteries over Schoolmasters, or the schools intrusted to their care, as the same rights or powers are by law insured to them."

Second, "That the Trustees for the time being shall have full power to pay and distribute the Income of the said Fund, from time to time, to or among all or such one or more of the Parochial Schoolmasters aforesaid in such proportions, and generally to dispose of the said Income among them in such manner as to such Trustees shall seem most likely to encourage active Schoolmasters, and gradually to elevate the literary character of the Parochial Schoolmasters and Schools aforesaid; and for these purposes to increase, diminish, or altogether to discontinue the salary or allowance

2 B

to be from time to time made to all or any of such Schoolmasters, without being accountable for so doing."

The Trustees, with a view to carrying out the intentions of Mr. Dick as thus indicated, have endeavoured to apportion the allowances from the fund under their care in such a way that they shall correspond in each case to the merits of the recipient as a teacher. These accordingly form a direct encouragement to active teachers, and become a means of elevating at once the literary character and material comforts of the schoolmasters within the three counties.

Before a teacher can become a participant in the Dick Bequest, it is imperative that he should pass a stringent examination before examiners appointed by the Trustees on all the branches of a thorough classical and literary education, including English Literature, History, Geography, Arithmetic, Latin and Greek, the higher branches of Mathematics, and Physics.

The funds are divided annually among those teachers who are eligible according to a regular scheme of division, in which effect is given, in accordance with certain fixed rules, to the state of each separate school in respect of (1.) the numbers in attendance, (2.) the branches of education taught, (3.) the number of scholars taught gratuitously, (4.) the personal scholarship of the teacher as ascertained by his preliminary examination, and (5.) the general merit and efficiency of the teacher, as appearing from the yearly reports of a visitor of schools employed by the Trustees for the purpose of inspection.

Further, in order to prevent the Bequest from being made a means of "relieving the heritors or other persons from their legal obligation to support the Parochial Schoolmasters," or of "diminishing the extent of such support," the Trustees have made the amount of school salary an element in their scheme of division, increasing or diminishing each teacher's allowance in proportion to the amount of his salary, thus awarding the larger allowance to the teacher who obtains the larger salary, and so creating an inducement to heritors to grant the maximum salary to efficient teachers, that they may thereby become entitled to the full enjoyment of the benefits of the Bequest.

The Visitor of schools fixes the number of marks to be allowed in the scheme of division to each teacher in respect of merit in teaching, as ascertained by the condition of his school, and this he does, not in relation to any fixed standard of merit, but on a com

parison of the state of the particular school with that of the others connected with the Bequest. Thus, a schoolmaster who receives 300 merit marks one year, may in the next receive only 200, not in consequence of any falling off in the actual condition of his school, but from its having failed to advance along with other schools with which it is thus placed in competition.

A teacher's allowance thus fluctuates from year to year, and so strongly does the element of merit enter into calculation, that, though the number of scholars, the branches taught, and the various other items above referred to, have an important bearing on fixing the amount of a teacher's allowance, all is of no avail unless his school, by its state of general efficiency, bears a satisfactory testimony to his merits and activity in the discharge of duty. Accordingly, whatever be the number in attendance on a school, if the Trustees have reason to think, that through want of proper care and attention on the teacher's part, its condition is falling off, they are in the constant practice of restricting his allowance to the extent of onethird or one-half, and sometimes, in aggravated cases of neglect, of withdrawing it altogether.

Under such a system, consistently and rigorously carried out, no schoolmaster, merely because he has once participated in the Bequest, can calculate with certainty on doing so in any future year. Allowances are not the right of a teacher in respect of his tenure of office, but are emphatically the reward of merit.

The Dick Bequest has now been in operation for nearly thirty years, and has been instrumental in carrying out in a remarkable degree the views of its founder. Indeed it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that this fund, as administered by the Trustees, has raised the literary character of the parochial schoolmasters and schools within the three favoured counties to a position of marked pre-eminence over those of any other part of Scotland.

The Trustees have reason to fear, however, that the usefulness of the Bequest is likely to be very seriously impaired, under the operation of the "Revised Code," recently laid on the table of the House of Commons by the Committee of the Privy Council on Education.

By Article 52 D. of the Code, the value of all "Annual Endowments" is to be deducted in calculating the amount of the Government grant to which any teacher shall be entitled, and the Trustees understand that allowances from the Dick Bequest are to be held