name by which to live. Now 1,122 are said to exist,
affording instruction to 100,593 pupils, and giving employment to 6,163
teachers. The kindergarten is a very recent importation. In 1874 we were
blessed with 55 of these human nurseries, with 1,636 pupils and 125
teachers. Now 37 States and 11 Territories report an aggregate of more
than 13,000,000 school population, or more than four times the total
population of the country in 1776. Then the school enrollment was of
course unknown. Now it amounts to the respectable figure of about
8,500,000. Then the schools were scattered and their number
correspondingly restricted. Now they are estimated at 150,000, employing
250,000 teachers. The total income of the public schools is given at
$82,000,000, their expenditures at $75,000,000, and the value of their
property at $165,000,000. The number of illiterates by the census of
1870 above the age of ten years, in round numbers, was 5,500,000. Of
these more than 2,000,000 were adults, upward of 2,000,000 more were
from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, and 1,000,000 were between ten
and fifteen years. Of the number between fifteen and twenty-one years it
is estimated that about one-half have passed the opportunity for
education."

SURFACE MARKINGS.

Mr. James Croll, in a letter to "Nature" (July 13, 1876), incidentally
mentions the lessons that may be derived from the configurations of the
earth's surface.

"Given the hardly perceptible wearing of water and time, a
canyon a mile deep, and many hundreds of miles long, has
resulted from the flowing of a stream. Given glacial 'abrasion'
and time enough, then valleys of rounded section and firths and
lake-basins of a particular kind probably resulted from the
flowing of ice.

"Where a stream flows from source to mouth on a gradual slope,
there has been no great disturbance of level since the stream
began to work. Where ice fills the dales there are no canyons.
Where ice has filled dales and has left fresh marks, canyons are
short and small. In mountain regions, where ice-marks are rare
or absent, canyons are of great depth and length, apparently
because their streams have flowed in the same channels ever
since the mountains were raised. But where canyons are marked
features, these lakes, firths, and dales of rounded section are
very rare, or do not exist. It seems therefore that hollows
wh