and in the villages until the beginning of May. Thus the whole
summer and part of the autumn is exempt from school duties--a wise
exemption in an agricultural community where the children, and perhaps
some of the teachers, have to work in the fields. The subjects taught
include morals, catechism, Bulgarian and ancient Bulgarian history,
civic instruction, geography, arithmetic, natural history, drawing,
singing, gymnastics, manual work (for boys), and embroidery (for girls).
Every parish or village of more than fifty houses must have at least one
primary school. The hamlets and villages of less than fifty houses are
considered, for educational purposes, as parishes.

The enactment rendering public instruction obligatory extends to all
children between the ages of six and twelve. The only temporary or
permanent exception allowed by the law is in favour of children
physically or intellectually unfit. Disobedience to the law is punished
by fines.

Ordinary education ceases with the primary schools or with the private
schools for Mohammedans and Jews which the Bulgarian law allows to be
maintained. The cost to the State of the education of each child at
these schools is less than L1 a year, of which the State provides rather
more than half, the communes the other half.

Thus the young Bulgarian gets a fairly sound start in life, so far as
schooling is concerned, if he intends to go on the land or to follow an
industrial occupation. If he, or she, has greater ambitions, there are
gymnasia for boys and high schools for girls. At these gymnasia the
subjects of instruction are religious knowledge, Bulgarian, French,
German, Russian, Latin and Greek languages, history, geography and civic
instruction, arithmetic, geometry and geometrical drawing, algebra,
descriptive geometry, physics, chemistry, natural science, psychology,
logic and ethics, and gymnastics. The subjects of instruction at the
girls' high schools include most of those mentioned above and also
hygiene and the rearing of children, domestic economy, embroidery, music
and singing. There are further special pedagogical schools for the
training of teachers, and there is a University at Sofia having chairs
for Historico-Philological, Physico-Mathematical, and legal courses.
This University is beginning to take the place of foreign universities
for the training of young Bulgaria for public life. The training is
narrower but, on the whole, probably better from a nationa