becoming angry or employing irony when the replies do not suit him. His responsibility is limited to having a knowledge of his subject; the rest is the affair of "others" or the director.

I do not see, either, what would prevent the organization in our schools of practical and artistic work such as is done in that of Dr. Lietz. Instead of our stupid singing lessons, in which there is too often taught an arid theory instead of real singing, and in which the best musicians. often receive the worst marks; instead of drawing lessons, in which the teacher is too often only a target for the mischievous, let there be something patterned upon what is done at Haubinda. It would not be so difficult to reach by degrees the point of putting a country train and a garden at the disposal of our schools, to add workshops to them, and thus to develop during the afternoon the technical and physical powers of the young. The principle once accepted and understood, it would merely be a question of adapting it as well as possible to each locality. In the villages there could also be put in requisition the aid of certain artisans of ability who could thus be interested in the school under the supervision of the teacher. In the towns, the director of the schools would have to play the part of Dr. Lietz.

Then I do not see why the system of prefects, themselves pupils, and of tasks done during fixed hours would not be applicable to our schools. At the very most the non-resident pupils would present some difficulty, which might be removed by making an exception in their

case.

Lastly, I do not see why the graduation examinations might not be suppressed, and advantageously replaced by certificates analogous to those of Ilsenburg and Haubinda and regulated by inspections of the schools. The baccalaureate examinations and those for entrance to the schools for graduate study are more than sufficient.

What cannot and must not be imitated in our present Swiss society is the boarding school with all its well known dangers, revealed especially by the French "lycées." By its system of liberty and of individual and moral development, the Lietz school is, moreover, just the antipodes of the boarding school system of the "lycée." But I grant that for the time being we can hardly dare to apprehend the possibility of the Lietz kind of boarding schools in our public school system, when in those very centres family life is too often only a snare and goes counter to all training of the will, the moral sentiment, and the intellect.

We must not try to do everything at once. Let us leave to the future the care of elaborating the social progress of the public school, and let us be satisfied for the moment with infusing some feeling into our

schools and our teaching. If we succeed in doing this, we shall already have done a great deal.

Our children have generally six hours of school a day. If we utilized these well, reducing the hour to forty-five minutes, cutting off an hour of intellectual labor, adding in its place two hours of manual labor, and replacing the tasks done at home by a fixed hour of free individual work with a pupil as prefect, we should come, without changing much in the schedule of the present condition of things and without doing any harm to family life, to the realization of a good part of the so desirable reforms, established in principle by Pestalozzi and Froebel and put into practice by Drs. Reddie and Lietz. I am sure that the parents and the pupils would be glad to grant one or two hours additional a day to a school as sound and as moral as this, in exchange for the nightmare of exercises done at home, of tasks, of confinement to the house, and of so many other tortures which are imposed upon our youth and which contribute along with the method of teaching to making school repulsive.

And, above all, who among us does not feel stirring within him the desire to furnish his country with men and women who may enrich and ennoble it, by giving it the best part of their labor. Does not the D. L. E. H. indicate to us a means ?

Do we not also perceive that for this purpose we must by every means develop in our children a liking for simplicity, endurance, and work, fortifying their will by the use of great effort, and elevating their sentiments by example; that, besides, we must direct their ideals and the ambition of their life toward the good and the beautiful, not by words but by deeds. The educational question of which we have just treated will come to grief in the future, only if we do not realize that it must be solved along with that of human selection, of which we have spoken here when dealing with evolutionary perfectibility. We cannot, it is true, produce greater than men, but we can combat the production of less

than men.'

As a naturalist, I have confined myself especially to what I have seen and observed myself. I have, therefore, neglected Abbotsholme and Ilsenburg in favor of Haubinda, at which I have been. But the reader,

(1) Taking leave of a school which is in reality a refined "new world" of the human soul, I may announce that two Swiss, Messrs. Werner Zuberbühler and Wilh. Frei, teachers in the school at Haubinda, have just bought,—with the help of certain benefactors, on an idyllic and healthy site on the shore of Lake Constance, the castle of Glarisegg, in the Canton of Thurgovia, and that since the spring of 1902 they have established there a "Swiss Landerziehungsheim" on the model of Abbotsholme, Ilsenburg, and Haubinda, at the same time adapting it to the needs of our country.

desirous of knowing more about each school, will have no difficulty in I end with a brief wish for

having the programmes forwarded to him.

the prosperity of our descendants: Fiat lux!

(1) By addressing the Schweizerisches Landerziehungsheim, "Schloss Glarisegg," Steckborn, Thurgovia, Switzerland, one may obtain all necessary information regarding this establishment.

R

ALFRED VON WEBER-EBENHOF

VIENNA

PART I.

ECENT progress in navigation, particularly in the development of inland navigation, has given great impetus among civilized nations to commercial intercourse by water, and many and varied are the schemes that have been proposed to increase the possibilities in this direction.

The rapid rise and unexpected expansion of the railroad system in the century just past impelled men to adopt the conclusion which, however, has proved to be false, that the railways alone would be able without difficulty to meet all the multifarious demands made upon them. Little competition was to be expected from the modest waterways which arose under such different conditions, so that successful inland navigation was mostly restricted to large streams, many of the artificial waterways barely managing to subsist or failing altogether.

The railways, however, have not realized expectations, and chiefly for two reasons. In the first place, the carrying capacity of a great number of roads reaches an insurmountable limit as traffic increases, and secondly, their costs of maintenance are so high that many bulky goods of low value cannot be carried at a profit.

On the other hand, transportation by boats of the largest possible dimensions is not only very much less expensive, but it permits of the conveyance of goods that have hitherto been unavailable, and thus new fields are opened to commerce and industry. The decisive success of waterways as a means of transportation is due in no small measure to recent advances in the science of practical engineering. Indeed, scarcely ever have there been similar achievements in any field of human activity in such a short space of time. Nothing seems impossible in these days: inventions formerly looked upon as absurdly chimerical have become actualities; scarce a day passes that some step in advance is not taken. Modern machines for the winning and manufacture of building materials, especially of iron and of cements, make possible the construction of enormous plants; perfected drilling machines worked by air pressure or electricity will speedily and without difficulty cause proud mountains to fall; the up-to-date derrick will lift and move the heaviest loads, while

Translated by Rudolph Tombo, Jr., of Columbia University.

Copyright, 1904, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.

with the aid of dredging appliances and excavating machines Aladdin. changes can be brought about in the earth beneath and in the waters under the earth. Yet of all the applications of engineering science, none more directly or more surely affects modern intellectual and industrial conditions than the science of hydraulics. All nations are at present turning their attention particularly to navigation in an endeavor to drive the pulsating life of the ocean highways of commerce inland, and by means of numerous widely ramified arteries to open up new territories to industrial exploits.

Great seaports have arisen from small and unimportant beginnings, new harbors have been established, and, by means of improvements at the mouths of large rivers, ocean commerce has been brought far inland. The German Nordostsee Canal forms the shortest possible route between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, while large ocean ships can proceed as far as Manchester via. the Liverpool-Manchester Canal. Regulation and canalization have given to the navigability of large streams proportions formerly undreamed of. Extensive networks of inland waterways have been formed by artificial canals running in every direction. As has been suggested, the ships employed should be as large as possible; but given even this condition, transportation by water cannot be successful unless the delays incident to lading and relading and to passage through locks are reduced to a minimum. All new inland waterways are, therefore, constructed with open stretches as long as possible and with as few locks as possible, so that boats can be joined together to advantage in a long tow and be moved by mechanical contrivances. It has become necessary in consequence to concentrate the various lifts at a few points, and with this in view monster mechanical lifting machines have been introduced, as, for example, at La Louvière in Belgium, at Henrichenburg on the Dortmund-Ems Canal and at Fontinette in France. Still more immense projects have been planned to overcome the greater heights of the lifts necessitated by concentration, and ship railways and inclined planes are to be used for this purpose.

1

Two determining factors control the conditions of navigation with respect to the continent of Europe. The first of these is constant and, on the whole, unvarying, consisting of the various orographical and hydrographical relations of the continent, while the second is inconstant and dependent upon so many extraneous conditions that it is rather more difficult to determine, namely, trade. In order to arrive at a clear idea of the natural function of the rivers of Europe and the waters surrounding the continent as systems of commercial waterways, we must first study the elements of the two factors just specified. The streams