PAPERS USED AT THE GENERAL EXAMINATION OF FEMALE TRAINING SCHOOLS.-Christmas, 1856. THE following papers are so practical and useful that we deviate from our usual course, and give them insertion :— DOMESTIC ECONOMY. SECTION I. 1. What kinds of food are required for young children? State clearly the reasons. 2. Give a clear account of the potato, and of the various uses to which it is applied. 3. Give receipts for Irish stew, and soups with and without meat; estimate the cost; and give an account of the nutritious qualities of each. SECTION II. 1. Name all the materials used in washing; and show for what properties or qualities each of these materials is useful. 2. What practical lessons have you had in the kitchen and laundry, either as pupil-teacher or as a student in training? State exactly what time has been so employed. 3. Describe accurately the best system for teaching needlework, including the fixing and cutting out. What difficulties may you expect to find in supplying a school with work, and what expedients would you propose to the managers? SECTION III. 1. Calculate the weekly and annual expenditure of a schoolmistress, having one or two pupil-teachers residing with her, and occupying a furnished house rent free. 2. Give clear instructions to a pupil-teacher about the purchase and uses of clothing materials, with full estimate of cost and value. SECTION IV. 1. Describe the best treatment for sprains, slight wounds, and whitlows. 2. Describe the poisonous vegetables most commonly found in England, the symptoms produced by them, and the best remedies. 3. Write a lesson on one of these subjects for girls about to leave school :Personal neatness. Frugality. GEOGRAPHY. 1.-The Supplementary Questions are not to be attempted by any Candidate of the First Year who has not answered one question in each of the preceding Sections. No such Candidate may answer more than two of the Supplementary Questions. 2. Candidates of the Second Year, and Teachers in Charge of Schools, may not answer more than six questions, but may choose them from any part of the paper. SECTION I. Draw a map of one of these portions of land, inserting the names of the principal towns: 1. The coast line of England from the mouth of the Tees to Harwich, with so much of the interior as is drained by the rivers between those points. 2. The counties drained by the Severn and its tributaries. 3. Scotland north of the Frith of Forth, with the adjacent islands. SECTION II. (These Questions may be illustrated by Sketches.) 1. Describe the physical features, climate, and productions of Italy. 2. Name the principal rivers of France, their tributaries, and the cities on their banks, stating briefly for what those cities are most remarkable. 3. Name the principal coal-fields of Europe, and give some account of their extent, and their effects upon the habits of the people. 4. Enumerate the rivers that flow into the Black Sea, and trace the course of one of these rivers, naming its tributaries and cities on its banks. SECTION III. 1. Name the possessions of England in Africa, and give a full description of the physical features and condition of one of these possessions. 2. Name the rivers of Hindoostan, and describe the course of the Ganges. 3. Give a clear account of New Zealand, its physical features, and the past and present condition of the inhabitants. 4. Which of the British Colonies are most important for population, natural and artificial productions? Support your statement by facts. SECTION IV. 1. Name the chief cities of Asia, and state on what account they are severally remarkable. 2. Name the United States of America, distinguishing the free States by a cross; and give some account of the climate and population of the North-Western States. 3. Name the countries between the Indus and the Red Sea, and give a brief account of the physical features, the chief cities, and the customs of the inhabitants. SUPPLEMENTARY. 1. Describe the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, and their effects upon navigation, and upon the climate of the adjoining countries. 2. Describe the scenery of the Alps, and give an account of the glaciers. 3. Describe the causes and effects of the monsoon. 4. Give a general account of the geological structure of the British Isles, and explain its bearing upon the condition and occupations of the inhabitants. 5. Enumerate the most remarkable animals found in Australia, Egypt, and South America. Give an account of the structure and habits of one in each locality, showing its adaptation to the climate and other circumstances. 6. Describe the principal phenomena of the Arctic Zone. 7. Enumerate the chief divisions of the human race, and describe the characteristic features and habits of the most remarkable. 8. Describe the chief vegetable productions of Ceylon, Australia, and Canada. 9. Compare the temperature and climate of the following places,-Madeira, New York, Rio Janeiro, Lisbon, Canton, and account for the difference. 10. Describe the movements of the earth, and the effects of those movements upon the seasons, the ocean, and the atmosphere. ARITHMETIC. 1. What is meant by a system of Numeration? What by a system of Notation? When is a system said to be decimal? 2. Show how you can divide by 10, 100, 1,000, &c., more easily than by any other number. If in multiplying by 7,000, we multiply by 7 and add three figures, what principles are illustrated by the process? 3. What do you mean by reducing fractions into lowest terms? ness of the process employed. Prove by means of a diagram that SECTION II. Show the correct 1. If a piece of ribbon measures 21 yards 2 nails, how many bonnets can be trimmed with 17 such pieces, suppose each bonnet requires 24 yards? How many crowns, half crowns, shillings, and groats, amount to £99. 16s. 4d., taking of each an equal number? 2. A man spends £155. 5s. 7d. per year, how much will he lay by in 37 years out of £200 per annum? If 6 million visitors entered the Crystal Palace in 26 weeks, what was the average attendance per day? 3. Find by Practice the value of 8,632 articles, at £1. 148. 3 d. £1,280 is divided among three persons, so that their portions are as 5, 3, 2, respectively, how much does each receive? SECTION III. 1. Find the sum, difference, product, and quotient of 27 and 54. The sum realized by a bankrupt's estate is £7,848, being of his debts, find the amount of the debts, and the dividend paid. 2. How long will it take 17 men to earn £50, if 12 men in 64 days can earn 13 guineas? 3. Divide 71 by 635. Find the value of 178 of a mile. Express 75 of a shilling as decimals of each of the coins of the realm. F SECTION IV. 1. Find the interest on £895 at 24 per cent. for 7 years 2 months. How long will it be before £374, put out at interest at 4 per cent., will realize a profit of £100? 2. There are 2 schools, one containing 650 children, and the other 340 children: 5 per cent. of the former are generally absent, 7.5 of the latter what is the average attendance in each? The present worth of a debt, due 6 months hence, is £25. 10s., and the rate of discount is 6 per cent. per annum, what is the amount of the debt? 3. Sold 16 cwt. 2 qrs. of soap, which cost £2. 6s. Sd. per cwt., at 61d. per lb., what was the gain upon the whole, and also per cwt. SECTION V. 1. Compare the advantages of a decimal system having £1 for the unit, with those of one which has a farthing for the unit. 2. What is the readiest way of converting our present money into decimals of £1 ? Give examples. 3. Add together the 18th part of £45, the 19th part of £23, and the 20th of £86; 7 flo. 5 cents. 7 mils. SECTION VI. 1. What books are required in book-keeping by single entry, and what is the use of each? 2. What are the respective advantages of single and double entry? SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 1. From the subjoined extract from a class register calculate the average age of the children, the average attendance for the week, the number present at all, and the average number of days attended by each child present at all. 2. Prepare the heads for a series of six lessons on physical geography for your first class; and state clearly what illustrations you propose to use for each lesson. 3. Describe fully the apparatus and illustrations you intend to use for collective lessons in natural history. To what extent do you propose to teach natural history? Give your reasons for this. 4. What faculties of children are called in active exercise by a good lesson on each of the following subjects: Colour, the Structure of an Insect, Climate, the Character of Jacob? Give clear reasons for your statement. 5. Upon what principles does the cultivation of memory depend? By what exercises is it best prepared to acquire, retain, and reproduce useful information? 6. What do you mean by method? Explain the relation between principles and ethods; and illustrate this by examples. + + + + 7. What exercises are best calculated to train children to acquire knowledge for themselves? 8. What are the chief practical objections to the elliptic and simultaneous methods? How can these objections be obviated? 9. What do you mean by the organization of schools? Upon what principles does its efficiency and success chiefly depend? 10. To what extent, in what subjects, and under what circumstances do you consider the assistance of ladies as visitors desirable? [We will insert a few more next month.-ED. E. J. E.] FACTS v. FICTIONS. Précis of correspondence between an Experimentalist and a Theorist; relative to the movements attributed to the Moon, to account for the fact that she presents always the same hemisphere towards the Earth, so that one-half of her surface has never been visible from our planet. EXPERIMENTALIST TO THEORIST. (WITH A PAMPHLET.) I've plann'd, adapted, and combined With Facts and Reasons, old and new ; The Data upon which it rests, I earnestly invite, and claim, Notes of New Books. The Office and Work of Universities. By the Very Reverend John H. Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. Pp. 384. London: Longmans. THES HESE Essays, for such they are, written by Dr. Newman, set forth the scope and legitimate objects of the new Irish Catholic University, of which the writer is the Rector. Let no Protestant lay this book down as a missile of Papacy unfit for his contemplation. If he do so, he will unworthily and groundlessly deprive himself of much profitable and remarkably eloquent wisdom on the general topic of education, in its high and comprehensive spheres; and especially of much experience and fruitful suggestions therefrom drawn out and well set forth, on the management and due moulding of Universities. We approve of much, very much, of the aims of this book, as they stand forth in its plainly written pages. We adopt in some measure its lucid description of what a University ought to be, together with its work character and methods. We admire still more highly the bold and earnest spirit of the writer, affording a wholesome contrast to the narrow self-seeking motives and furtive caution of the great bulk of the thinkers and actors in these morbid times. Right well and fearlessly says Dr. Newman :— "If I am charged with being shallow on the one part, or off-hand on the other; if I myself feel that fastidiousness at my own attempts that grows upon an author as he multiplies his compositions, I shall console myself with the reflection that life is not long enough to do more than our best, whatever that may be; and they who are ever taking aim make no hits; that they who never venture never gain; that to be ever safe is to be ever feeble; and that to do some substantial good is the compensation for much incidental imperfection." We believe that this is the true path to all human usefulness. It is just the one main distinction between the useless conformist to whatever reigns, and the useful adventurer into the realms of new truth: whence the progress of civilization derives its strength and sustenance, and where earnest endeavours grapple with the barriers and barnacles by which prejudice and error fortify their strongholds and hoodwink mankind. Dr. Newman's ideal of a University seems to be summed up in these words, though he expatiates on it through many pages, and presents it in various aspects, we regret to say, of unattainable excellence : "It is a place of concourse whither students come from every quarter for every kind of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every kind everywhere; you must go to some great city or emporium for it. There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all together, which you find each in its own separate place elsewhere. All the riches of the land, and of the world are carried up thither; there are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the centre of trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival skill, and the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful voices and miraculous [sic] performers. It is the place for great preachers, |