almost without exception general statements and not definite experiments were given. Great confusion was manifested as to the meaning of allotropy, many candidates giving the definition almost or exactly in the words of the text-book, and then giving as instances, water, steam, and ice, or water, ice and snow. Whenever the "properties " of a substance are asked for, there are noteworthy omissions. It would be a distinct advantage if pupils were taught to distinguish clearly between physical and chemical properties and to write down the properties under these heads. Very few candidates in writing of hydrogen, mentioned anything about its solubility or liquefaction, and still fewer said anything about its reducing powers. Similarly the basic characters of ammonia were scarcely ever mentioned. Junior Physiology. Last year the examiner, in his report, made some comments upon the evidences revealed by many of the answers of candidates that sufficient attention was not paid to the practical aspects of Physiology, and he further gave a strong hint that improvement would be expected in this respect. This year the paper set was very simple in character, but it was designed with the distinct object of eliciting information that could be more intelligently given by those who had had some practical acquaintance with the subject than by those who had relied solely on their text-book. The result is not satisfactory, Question 1 included a little addendum, which inquired whether the candidate had ever seen the structure which was required to be described. This was the diaphragm, one of the most important and distinctive structures in the body. Out of the total number of the 103 candidates who sat for the Examination, 56 said they had seen it, and the remainder confessed, with commendable candour, that they had not done so. The figures are not very satisfactory, and they become still less satisfactory when it appears that many of those, who claimed a practical acquaintance with the structure in question, described it in terms so inaccurate and inappropriate as to show that their so-called practical study was a farce. Not a few said they had seen the diaphragm in an animal in which it is practically non existent. Then what can be said of answers which described milk as seen under the microscope as of a heli[o]trope colour, and in parts of a dark purple, except that it is a severe indictment against the milkman? Or how can you believe that these students have ever performed the very elementary exercise of putting a drop of milk under the microscope who say that it is blue or yellow in colour, 66 or that the fat globules (written "lobules" in numerous instances) run together to form butter under such conditions? Or what value can you attach to the statement, based on a glimmering of the truth, that milk is "fairly divided up into everything"? Or that when you look at a piece of spinal cord cut across you see “a round-shaped thing with four horns, but on closer inspection the round article is seen not to be round, but &c., &c." Or that "the spinal cord consists of a soft substance something like lanoline, and about the same thickness"? One wonders what sort of practical acquaintance can underlie such answers as these. The examiner must repeat his warning that if Physiology is not to be taught practically it had better be abandoned as a subject for the Junior. For it is the ease with which many of the structures and mechanisms of the body can be demonstrated, and the interest which can be excited in the minds even of the very young by their demonstration which gives to Physiology its value as an educational subject. In the absence of such intelligent demonstrations the subject becomes only an instrument of cram. The examiner notices this year, with satisfaction, less prolixity. though the same old tendency to drag in irrelevant matter is not absent; the spelling, too, shows an improvement, though in this respect it is sometimes astonishingly bad. The errors frequently extend to the actual words appearing in the questions, and it may be mentioned that three or four candidates, the facts of whose answers would have entitled them to pass, failed on this account. There is no excuse for such inaccuracies, and very little for similar errors in the common and oft-recurring technical words of the subject. Twenty-two candidates, or a fifth of the whole, obtained less than 20 per cent. of marks, and out of this number seven obtained less than 10 per cent. Surely most of these must have an exceedingly sanguine temperament. ness. Senior Examination. Senior English Literature. The chief defect in the answers has been a want of thoroughIt is shown in two ways, one of them the explaining and elaborating of what is perfectly obvious. This is especially common in the answers to Nos. 2 and 5. Such questions require candidates not merely to explain but to show their intelligence by discovering the words and metaphors requiring explanation. The other way is want of depth. One does not expect too much from the answers to a question like that on pathos, but it is a pity that candidates should have thought so little on such a matter and yet be filled with a mass of knowledge that they must very soon forget. In this connection the notes that I have made on the Higher Examination may be found of use. Among those guilty of positive error, two defined pathos as the feeling of passing from the sublime to the ridiculous; one says that "pathos is a hard subject to introduce into poetry, especially as it does not seem to fit with poetry"; and another, "Pathos in poetry is the feeling of sadness which comes over one as he reads the poem and sees that the poet is speaking about himself and complaining about the way he is treated, and his hard lot". Most, however, were not wrong, but merely defective or superficial, and in only two or three of the best papers was there any thought of different forms of pathos. Senior History. In the Senior as well as in the Junior papers many answers were spoilt by carelessness in reading the questions. In Question 4 students were asked to give the changes in the forms of government in England from 1649 to 1660, yet one student began with Henry VII's reign, another began with the death of Cromwell, and two candidates continued the answer down to William and Mary's reign. Another fault was that the sense of due proportion in an answer was often wanting; there was frequent reiteration, with a want of clear arrangement in the answers; important points were passed over lightly, and undue weight given to less important details, thus-to refer to Question 4 again-more was sometimes written about Richard Cromwell's government than about the various changes under Oliver Cromwell. Most of the papers showed careful and intelligent study of the text-book, and it was only occasionally that the examiner was confronted with such wild statements as "The House of Lords was first established by Oliver Cromwell", "After the death of Charles I the country was governed by a Council of State chosen by the late king." The question on the character of Charles I, which gave scope for applying the facts learned in the text-book, was not well done. Most candidates seemed to think they had given Charles's character when they had written a page or two of violent denunciation, ascribing nearly every possible fault to him, and finding no extenuating circumstances; very few, indeed, seemed to recognize that there were any principles at stake in the struggle between Charles and Parliament. In several papers the spelling was weak-loose for lose, tray for trait, rite for right, and Gamaica for Jamaica were among the mistakes. There were also indications of weakness in geography; in Question 2 Virginia was often put in Central America. But on the whole the work sent in by the Seniors was of a much higher standard than that done by the Juniors. Senior Latin. The prose composition was poor. At least half the candidates left it to the last, in spite of the warning contained in the examiner's notes last year. This fact accounted to some extent for the number of gross breaches of the simple rules of concord which marred even the better papers. The pieces set for translation from unprepared books were on the whole badly translated. Candidates showed not so much lack of vocabulary as inability to ascertain the relationship of the words in the sentences. This points to the need of practice in translating unseen passages without the aid of dictionary or grammar. Many of the answers to the questions which called for the translation of extracts from the set books were excellent as regards both accuracy and style, but the recurrence of the same mistakes in certain sets of papers indicated that with these candidates the teaching had been at fault. The questions dealing with grammar were inadequately answered. The examiner recommends that greater attention should be paid to prose composition, unseen work, and grammar. Too much time appears to be spent upon the set books in comparison with that spent upon the other branches of the subject. Many candidates evidently learnt their translations by heart, and in the Vergil gave, with some accuracy, a translation of half a line or a line beyond that which they were asked to translate. Senior German. Among the 67 candidates examined in the Senior Division, there were seven failures, and three deserved high credit. But the mass of the papers showed imperfect acquaintance with the elements of German grammar as well as idiom. Particularly noteworthy was the almost universal misuse of the German preposition "bei" as an equivalent of the English "by" where "von" ought to have been substituted as the regular preposition, indicating the agent in connection with passive verbs. Senior Arithmetic and Algebra. The Arithmetic and Algebra was on the whole very good. In Question 8 (ii.) it frequently happened that only one set of possible solutions was given. In Question 9 (a), even when the graphs were correctly plotted, very few answers indeed showed that the candidates had a knowledge of the method of applying the results to the solution of an equation. Senior Trigonometry. The Trigonometry was answered very well on the whole. The advantage of making students familiar with examples, general in character, and involving the application of several principles, rather than using a number of examples to illustrate each principle separately, can not be too strongly impressed. Senior Physics. The results from the Physics paper were very poor. The knowledge which candidates appeared to have was on the whole rather superficial. Although no doubt many could have defined say "The coefficient of expansion", few were able to apply the definition correctly. The answers to question 2, as well as the results from the Junior, seem to indicate that students, as a rule, have not been well drilled in plotting results. Question 4 was rather disappointing. A clear understanding of what occurs in the propagation of a wave motion seemed wanting, and in the second part of the question the effect of the sounding board was seldom mentioned. The answers to Question 9 indicated that most of the students who attempted it had the idea that resistance was proportional to volume. Senior Chemistry. The following points may be noted. Though there is an improvement in the sketches of apparatus, many are still very badly drawn. In their answers to the question as to the effect of heating together potassium carbonate and carbon the great |