60. Chandos Wren Hoskyns. Talpa; or, the Chronicles of a Clay Farm. An Agricultural Fragment. By CHANDOS WREN HOSKYNS. and Cheaper Edition, with Frontispiece by George Cruikshank, Fcp. 8vo, price 38. 6d. New 61. H. Edwards, LL.D. Illustrations of the Wisdom and Benevolence of the Deity, as manifested in Nature. By H. EDWARDS, LL.D. 62. Dairy Farming. The Rearing and Feeding of Dairy Stock, and the Management of their Produce. By RURICOLA Crown 8vo, price 5s. In a handsome quarto volume, containing 35 Plates, price 35s. coloured; or with a double set of Plates, coloured and plain, extra cloth, £2. 12s. 6d. THE GENERA OF BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA, SELECTED FROM Curtis's British Entomology. THE Proprietor of 'The Genera of British Insects,' by JOHN CURTIS, F.L.S., comprised in Sixteen Volumes, price £21 (originally £43), having been frequently solicited to publish portions of the Work in separate monographs, it has been determined to issue the LEPIDOPTERA and COLEOPTERA in separate volumes. The exquisite figures of BRITISH MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES, nearly two hundred in number, engraved in this renowned Work, have been hitherto beyond the reach of ordinary collectors. They constitute a fourth of the whole Work, and even at the reduced price cannot be issued separately, in the original form, under six guineas, on account of the great expense of colouring the plant and larva. The volume above announced will contain a figure, with description, of every species of LEPIDOPTERA contained in 193 plates of 'Curtis's British Entomology,' transferred from the original copper, and coloured in the very best manner by hand. The COLEOPTERA, or BEETLES, comprised in 256 of Curtis's plates, will also be published in the same style, at the same reduced rate. Of each volume copies will be prepared with an additional set of plates, uncoloured, selected with the view of showing the minute details of the engraving. Entomologists, both of this country and of the Continent, are universally of opinion that the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland have never been figured in a manner at all equal in excellence to the figures of Mr. Curtis. Professor Latreille, the eminent entomologist of Paris, in directing the attention of his students to the best works for the aid of figures, pronounced this to have "attained the ultimatum of perfection ;" and Cuvier spoke of the character of the Insects figured in this Work as "being represented with the greatest fidelity." "Vous savez qu'à l'égard d'un grand nombre d'espèces, leur détermination réclame le secours de figures. Il est donc de mon devoir de vous indiquer les livres où vous trouverez les meilleures. Celui de M. Curtis, sur les genres d'insectes indigènes de l'Angleterre, me paraît avoir atteint l'ultimatum de la perfection."-Latreille, Cours d'Entomologie. "M. John Curtis, naturaliste Anglais, a commencé la publication d'un Genera iconographique des genres d'insectes et de plantes propres à la Grande Bretagne. Leurs caractères sont représentés avec la plus grande fidélité."-CUVIER, Le Règne Animal. op'nd opened TION READING REFORM ASSOCIATION, An educational society founded to introduce the Reading Reform or Improved System of Teaching to Read in the Ordinary Print by means of a Previous Course of Phonetic Reading. President. W. Gregory, Esq., M.D., Professor of Chemistry, University, Edinburgh. Alexander J. Ellis, Esq., Brooklands, Alconbury, near Huntingdon. Honorary Secretary. Charles B. Arding, Esq., 9, King's Road, Bedford Row, London. Committee. J. D. Campbell, Esq., 63, Great Marylebone Street, London. H. U. Janson, Esq., Pennsylvania Park, Exeter. J. Meston, Esq., 1, Dunster Court, Mincing Lane, London. R. C. Nichols, Esq., F.S.A., 11, John Street, Adelphi, London. Offices and Bepot. 9, King's Road, Bedford Row, London. Publisher. F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster Row, London. THE educational problem underlies all other political questions. To promote its solution in an humble but fundamental manner is the object of this Association. With the nature of education, its aims and objects, and the theological or denominational difficulties which beset it, however deeply the members of this Association may be and are interested in them as individuals, yet as an Association they have nothing to do. Their labours apply equally to private teaching, and to schools for all creeds and systems, and for all ranks and ages, but more especially to the schools for the children of the working classes. The following Extracts from the Reports of Canon Moseley, in the Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education for 1845, vol. i. pp. 254, 228, 229, and for 1846, vol. i. p. 162, will show, on reliable authority, the great desideratum in common school teaching: 1. . . . . "Reading [is] the great business of the elementary school, its most 2. "Out of 13,381 children I find that 2080, being 1 in 6, read in the Scriptures tedious and difficult task. Offices and Depot, 9, King's Road, Bedford Row, London. ... with tolerable ease and correctness. In recording the number I have... used a large measure of charity. Had the ability of these children to read been tried in any book of secular instruction, the number of children whom I found capable of reading with ease and correctness would have been diminished one half. It is certain that a considerable proportion of the children, probably one half, must leave the schools and be absorbed into the labouring community of the country, not being able to read. . . . . On the whole, I am convinced that the greater number of the children who frequent the schools which I have inspected do not acquire in them that mechanical skill in reading which might encourage them to take up a book, under ordinary circumstances, with the prospect of deriving pleasure or instruction from the perusal of it." .... 3. "Considering that teaching to read is the principal occupation of our National Schools, that it is a drudgery begun with the first opening intelligence of a child, and continued without intermission until the last day which it passes in the school, it is to me very wonderful that so imperfect and inadequate a result is obtained." A means which should facilitate and shorten the process of teaching to read, which should raise it from mere drudgery into an instrument for improving the intellectual and active powers of the pupil, must therefore be considered as one of the first requisites of national education in its present condition. This is what the Reading Reform Association proposes to supply. Their method is founded on the philosophical principle of teaching by approximation. The design of the English orthography is phonetic, that is, to represent the sounds of words, (Greek, phōnētikos, belonging to phone, the voice). The introduction of a few auxiliary letters enables us to make the English alphabet strictly phonetic, and hence to use a phonetic orthography as a first approximation to that in ordinary use. Children are taught to read in this phonetic spelling with ease and pleasure; for its rules are simple and have no exceptions. They are next introduced to the commonest contrivances for supplying the want of the auxiliary letters, in ordinary or romanic spelling, (so called because it employs the Roman letters only). This forms the second approximation, and results in their reading all ordinary books suited to their comprehension within six or eight weeks after they are able to read the phonetic print. Finally, a third and last approximation leads to the anomalies of orthography, by the introduction of writing, in which spelling is for the first time required. It is a proved fact that children can be taught to read the ordinary print in one year by this means as well as in two years on most of the methods generally employed. It has been ascertained, by numerous experiments, that the intellectual powers of children are much improved by their first learning to read in accordance with a philosophically regular system such as the phonetic, while their active powers are greatly evoked by the method adopted for passing to the ordinary orthography. It is a system which pleases both teacher and pupil. As a secondary result, of considerable importance in itself, the pronunciation and enunciation of the children is strikingly improved by the careful training they receive in phonetic reading. Offices and Depot, 9, King's Road, Bedford Row, London. The following extracts will show the opinions entertained of this system by practical educators and experimenters: 1. Mr. Sheriff Watson, of Aberdeen, a gentleman well-known for his benevolent labours in promoting Industrial Schools, writes to the Ragged School Union Magazine for Sept., 1854, p. 181: It [the Phonetic System] appears to me to possess such advantages over the common method [of teaching to read] that I think it should be adopted in the Ragged Schools. The advantages are facility in learning, and correctness in pronunciation, and it has been ascertained that a child taught phonetically for six or nine months can be transferred at once to the 3rd Irish Class Book, and in a week or less will read the romanic (or ordinary character) as easily as the phonetic. Indeed I think it may be called the royal road to learning." 2 2. Rev. J. Clay, B.D., Chaplain of the Preston House of Correction, writes, in his Annual Report for 1850, p. 32:-"It is enough, we are so far assured, that, where there is ordinary capacity to work upon, the power of reading the Gospel, as printed in the phonetic character, may be attained [by adults] in 30 lessons of an hour each; and that 20 additional lessons will suffice for transferring this power to the same book printed in the ordinary character." 3. A Committee appointed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, U.S., to examine the system, reports, 13th April, 1852:-" The examples the committee have seen, have proved that by means of the phonetic alphabet, the child or ignorant adult has been enabled to learn to read the common print in a much briefer space of time than is usual. ... The committee would recommend the introduction of the phonetic system [or Reading Reform] into all the primary schools of the State, for the purpose of teaching the reading and spelling of the common orthography." 4. Answer of Miss Baxter, teacher of a com. mon school, at Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., to Mr. McKean, the Superintendent of Public Schools in New York, in 1853. Question 1. Can children learn to read phonetically sooner than by the ordinary method ? Answer. From the experience that I have had in teaching both methods, I say, without hesitation, that children learn to read phonotypic books fluently in less than half the time usually occupied in mastering the alphabet and the simplest words in common print. Question 2. After learning the phonetic method, can they learn the common method as well, as accurately? Answer. The children whom I have taught phonetically, read the common print with more correctness and beauty than any class I have ever trained by any of the various modes that have been suggested by the friends of education. In spelling they are superior to the other children in the school who have been studying three times as long. The school in which this experiment has been tried is a large one, numbering nearly seventy pupils and having but one teacher. The children in the phonetic class have been studying about one year, during which period they have had no more time devoted to them than an equal number of the remainder of the school, Their average age is less than seven years. 5. Mr. Silver, who has used the system since 1850 in the Town Mission School of Haddington, N.B., says (June, 1856):-" With all the drawbacks and difficulty with which I have to contend in teaching the ragged school here, from the character of the children, the entire want of mental and moral culture at home, and the very irregular attendance of most, I find I teach them to read the common print as quickly as I could, with the old system, teach the children of intelligent parents, parents who took a deep interest in the progress of their children, and assisted them in their lessons at home. I think the phonetic system is as 4 to 1 compared to the old system. It is at least 3 to 1 in point of time, but then when I take into consideration its advantages as a logical training, I cannot properly estimate its superior merits." 6. From Mr. Williams, now of the Midland Institute, Birmingham, who tried the system several years in Edinburgh. "The experiment I tried in 1850-1, showed that children averaging five years of age could learn to read books printed in the phonetic type in one third or one fourth of the time which children between six and seven years of age could, without the intervention of the phonetic system, learn to read the common romanic books [i. e. those in the ordinary print], and when these younger children had been between ten and eleven months learning to read through the intervention of the phonetic system, they could read books printed in the romanic [or ordinary type] quite as well as the elder class which had been engaged double the time, learning to read without the intervention of the phonetic system. This experiment was carefully made, the two classes working side by side at the same time, day by day. Subsequent experience has fully confirmed the result of this experiment. As regards the intelligence and pleasure of the children, I prefer the phonetic method most decidedly-[and also] as regards the labour and comfort of teaching to read. The changing from the phonetic to the romanic reading is a matter of very little difficulty indeed, provided the children are carried far enough with the phonetic to read it easily without spelling." 7. From Mr. Chapman, teacher of (the late) Lord Shrewsbury's school at Alton. "I have continued to practise the phonetic system in my school with unabated zeal and pleasure from Nov. 1854 till now (June, 1856), and my opinion of its superior merits has become more and more corroborated by daily experience. I can satisfy any person who is willing to honour me with a visit at my school, that, as soon as the chil. dren are made acquainted with the contents of the Phonetic Primer they may commence reading in a Romanic Primer and may continue afterwards the alternate use of phonetic and romanic books, the former rendering essential service to the deciphering of the words in the latter." Offices and Depot, 9, King's Road, Bedford Row, London. |