tional society, have raised a fund of $1,400, and express a determination to increase it to $2,500. They have also adopted plans for a brick school-house, 20x40 feet on the ground, and we doubt not they will carry their enterprise to completion. God bless the ladies! A subscription is also out in Lincoln for the same noble purpose."

Under this title Hon. W. G. Ritch, Sec. retary of the Territory, has made a recent report to the Commissioner of Education at Washington, Gen. Eaton. One would naturally consider New Mexico about the last portion of our territory in which to find educational progress, or, indeed, even any interest in education. But the tidal wave of civilization moves fast. Neither "Doubtless," continues the Report, the chaotic and turbulent elements be." there are other cnterprises of a similar queathed to the territory by Mexico, nor character in other enterprising towns, of the presence of hostile and nomadic which mention has not been made. In Indian tribes, can resist its strong ongo. very many districts the use of a school ings. Even there the schoolmaster is room is donated; in others rented for a In Dona Ana and Grant abroad, schools are multiplying, and civ. moderate sum. ilization is crystalizing into the forms of other and older States.

Provision for a school fund was made by the Legislative Assembly of 1871-2. This fund consists of 25 per cent. of the entire tax on property, a poll-tax of $1.00 on every male citizen above the age of 21 years, and any "surplus of more than $500 in the treasury of any county after paying the current expenses of such county."

counties the supervisors of public schools donate their per diem allowed by law, to the school fund."

There are supposed to be in New Mexico nearly 23,000 children of school age, of whom, however, nearly 16,000 do not yet attend school, from want of oppor. tunity.

We further learn from the Report that five of the private schools are convents, under the control and management of the "Sisters of Loretto," with an attendance of 546 pupils, 120 of whom are poor and receive free tuition. They have 21 teachers and an income of $12,000. There are three schools under the control of the

Statistics of the past year show 133 public and 26 private schools-an increase of 120 for 1873. Reading, writing and arithmetic are taught in all the schools, grammar in 41, geography in 34, and history in 17. Other higher branch-"Christian Brothers" (Catholic), two of es are also taught in a few.

In Silver City, Grant Co., says the Re. port, "the ladies have formed an educa.

which have an attendance of 180 pupils, 10 teachers and an income of $5,450. There is also a Jesuit school at Albu

querque.

These and other private schools teach both the common and higher English and Spanish branches, and it is believed will prove of great value in educating teachers. Some of them, the Secretary has reason to believe, are model schools.

PUEBLO INDIAN SCHOOLS.

Two Presbyterian Mission | which, in effect, were of course most parschools are reported, with an attendance alyzing to productive industries, exhaustof 80 pupils and three teachers. Tuition ing to accumulated resources, and which generally free. There is also one Metho- made even existence itself problematic. dist Episcopal Mission school, with an at- In those times, self-preservation, the first tendance of 80 pupils, two teachers, and law of nature, became the chief thought an income of $700. in the family circle, and the main business of life with each family. There was no time, opportunity or impulse for social or intellectual improvement, nor had there been for generations. Such in brief was the condition in which the govern. ment found the people at the time the territory became part of the Republic. They were and likewise continued to be for a long time beset on all sides by hostile and nomadic Indian tribes, embodi ments of all the villainies incident to unregenerate man;-and, also, with not a few of the outlaws, hair brained and graceless set, ever present on the frontier of an advancing American civilization. Scarce had the Government, through the civil and military authorities, made an impression toward bringing order out of chaos, when followed the rebellion, threatening the integrity and life of the nation; during which event, be it said to the Of the people, he writes that it is sim-credit of the people of New Mexico, ple justice to say they are as a class kind, they remained true to the Flag and cheerhospitable, industrious, tractable, and law fully contributed their quota of patriotic abiding, and in point of morals and in-citizens towards the defence of her soil tegrity will compare favorably with very many who have enjoyed much greater advantages. He says:

Of these there are five, two of which are under the Presbyterian Board of Missions, but are managed in no spirit of sectarianism, are open to all who apply, and are exciting a growing interest. Twelve hundred dollars of the fund is contributed by the Presbyterian Board, and $2,800 by the General Government.

The Secretary wisely says that the manifest need for the public schools is a uniform system throughout the Territory-a central authority to establish some general plan, embodied in printed form, for the management of the schools.

and the suppression of the rebellion. This event, of course, still further kept education and progress in abeyance.

"Under the protection which they have enjoyed from the government, more particularly for the past few years, and the freedom from oppression of the old government, and the resultant prosperity, they are coming to think of those matters calculated to better their condition in life, and not the least of these is Education."

"It is well to bear in mind the entirely anomalous condition of the people and territory, when compared with any other state or territory in the Union, and that the power has not in all cases been vouchsafed to human wisdom to eradicate the abuses of years in a day. New Mexico, before its acquisition by the United States, had been utterly neglected for generations by the government of old Mexico in all things appertaining to its material prosperity and social advancement; and that the people were only cognizant of a su- | Newburg, on the Hudson, the largest perperior power as indicated in the presence fect skeleton of a mastodon which has of exacting revenue officers, or the re- yet been exhumed on this continent. The cruiting sergeants, incident to the chaotic summer had been exceedingly hot and and turbulent state of a government beset dry. Many small lacustrine deposits had with revolutions and counter revolutions been exposed by the drought, and the

A GIGANTIC RELIC.

In the year 1845 there was found, at

66

farmers had industriously seized upon | By its side, in way of contrast, is the the opportunity to remove these rich beds frame of the elephant Pizarro, the largest of fertility to their tillage-lands and fields. ever brought to this country. The skele. The drought at last laid bare one of ton of the Mastodon giganteus will not fail these deposits in a bog on the farm of to cause the visitor to start back in awe, Mr. N. Brewster, a spot that had never and he will be hardly able to suppress been known to become dry before. Mr. that adjective of fools, Impossible! Brewster at once summoned his men to It is twelve feet high, and thirty-four feet remove the deposit, as rapidly as possible, in length, from the tips of the tusks to to his fields and farm-yards. One day, the extremity of its tail. Its trunk is toward evening, in the latter part of sum- seventeen feet in length. The animal mer, these laborers struck a hard sub-must have weighed more than 20,000 stance. Some said it was "a rock;" oth- pounds! ers, a “log;” others, jestingly, a mammoth."

It is impossible to conjecture how many years ago this creature may have lived. Early the next morning, Mr. Brewster What marvelous scenes must have passed went with his laborers to the field, and before its eyes in its wanderings! What found the supposed rock or log to be an gigantic forests; what noble water-coursimmense bone. The men began digging, es; what luxurious vegetation; what full of eager curiosity, and exposed to strange animals may have been its comview the massive skull and long white panions-species that passed away long tusks of a mastodon. These tusks were before civilization brought its destructive of such immense size and length as to weapons to the Western shores! Was cause the most wonderful reports to go man, too, its contemporary; if so, how flying about the neighborhood, and to humiliating to intellectual pride is the draw the good people of Newburg in oblivion that consigns to conjecture and crowds to the place. It was soon discov-mystery so large a portion of the human ered that the perfect skeleton of a masto- race!-Popular Science Monthly. don was embedded in the peat. Sheerpoles and tackles were obtained, and, amid excitement, cheering, and many cautions, the bones of the monster were raised from the bed where they had lain no one can tell how many thousand years.

EDUCATION AND HEREDITY.

The special aim of education is to transmit to the child the sum of those habits to which he is to conform the course of his life, and of those branches of knowl. Two days were occupied in these inter-edge which are indispensable for him in esting labors. The relics drew to them the pursuit of his calling; and it must an immense number of people from the begin by developing in the pupil the facsurrounding country. Beneath the pelviculties which will enable him to make bones of this mastodon were found five these habits and this knowledge his own. or six bushels of broken twigs, which evidently had constituted the animal's last meal. He had undoubtedly been mired while attempting to cross this bog, and in this manner perished. These twigs were from one-quarter to threeeighths of an inch in diameter, and a little more than an inch in length. They were supposed to belong to the willow, linden, and maple trees.

It teaches the child to speak, to move about, to look, to use his senses, to hear, to understand, to judge, to love. But now the influence of education, opposed as it is to that of heredity, is so great, that in most cases it is of itself alone capable of producing a moral and psychological likeness between children and parents. If heredity determined irresistibly and infallibly in the descendants the essential characters of their ancestors' personality, education would be superflu ous. When once it is admitted that edu

This skeleton is the most remarkable object in the Warren Museum, Boston, and is the largest one of the Mastodon giganteus ever discovered on the continent. cation, a long, watchful, laborious train

Bienne is a pleasant town at the northern end of the Lake of Bienne and at the foot of the Jura Mountains. This lake is smaller than the Lake of Neuchatel, and is only a few miles to the north of it, so that when Louis went to this place to school he did not move very far away from his old home in Mottier. What he did at the school is more than we know. We can be sure he was not idle, for at the end of the four years that he spent there he was counted one of of the best scholars in the whole school.

to study the books that had been printed about such things. His vacations were for rest and play, and instead of that he took up Natural History in all its branches, and worked away harder than ever at finding out everything he could about birds, plants, and fishes.

Fortunately, there was a young clergyman in Orbe who liked such studies, and Louis made arrangements to study with this Rev. Mr. Fivaz. With Mr. Fivaz for a master, Louis took up Botany, and day after day they roamed through the fields and over the hills, examining every plant that came in their way, learning its name, comparing it with other plants, picking it to pieces to see how it was made, and finding out all there was to be known about it. When it rained and the walking was bad, Louis went to Mr. Fivaz's house and together they went through the books on such matters, studying hard from morning till night.

How could that be? A boy who likes to fish so much seldom makes a good scholar. Yes; but you must see that with all his love for fishing, boating, and roaming through the woods, he was a student. If he had spent days in drifting about in his boat it was because he was studying the sies and teaching himself to observe and to understand quickly what things meant when he saw them happen. In learning the names of all And all this was in vacation time, when the birds he had taught himself to re- Louis was free to play with the other boys member things, and in catching butter- in the streets of Orbe, or to do nothing at flies he taught his eyes and his fingers all if he felt so inclined. He certainly how to work quickly and surely. Of was not so inclined, and during the four course, such a boy took to books easily years he was at school at Bienne, he spent and got on twice as fast as a stupid boy every day of his vacations in hard study who had never noticed the difference be- with his friend and tutor Mr. Fivaz. Not tween the nest of a barn-swallow and a plants alone, for Louis was so much interrobin redbreast. ested that he learned very quickly, and The school at Bienne had vacations he was soon ready to take up other natujust as our schools do here, and Louis ral sciences. Geography proved to be made the most of them. His father had wonderfully easy. Had he not seen moved away from Mottier, and had taken | islands and capes, continents, peninsulas, a house at a place called Orbe at the other end of the Lake of Neuchatel. Here Louis went to spend his vacations. It was away from the lake and up a narrow valley between the mountains. The Jura Mountains crowd close up to the narrow river that flows through the place, and the town is shut in on every side by steep hills and rocky cliffs.

He was as ready as ever to explore the country round about, and every day was spent in watching the birds and insects, and examining the flowers. As he grew older he found that the birds and plants could not always tell him all he wished to know about themselves, and he began

and all the other divisions of land and water in miniature, all about the lakes? and as for mountains and hills, had he not seen them all his life?

Not far away from Orbe stands a fine mountain, almost as high as Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and known as the Dent de Vanlion. No wonder they called it the "Tooth of Vanlion." It was like a sharp tusk, pointed and hard, and almost as steep as the wall of a house. Were it not that there was a grassy slope on one side, the venturesome Louis could not have climbed to the very top, and sat down on the bare, windy summit.

The great picture-book of the world lay