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SUBJECT which has attracted wide discussion among scientific men, is forced directly upon the attention of visitors to Cape May; namely, the rapid wearing away and subsidence of the shores, and the advance of the tide-waters on the land.

Along the entire extent of the New Jersey coast, this phenomenon is observable. At the mouth of Dennis creek, and for many miles along the Delaware bay shore, the marsh is washed away, according to the reports of local surveyors, on an average of about one rod in two years; and from early maps, this would appear to have been going on at this rate ever since the first settlement of the country. Thus an island which is laid down on a map of 1694 as containing three hundred acres, now shows at low-water only half an acre, and at highwater is entirely covered.

PROGRESS OF THE ENCROACHMENT.

On the west side of Cape May, at a point where the shore is most boldly outlined, the solid gravel bank, from twelve to eighteen feet high, wears away about one foot a year; the foundations of the houses built at the first settlement, as early as 1691, were long since undermined, and the waters of the bay now cover the place where they once stood.

At this cape, the most southerly point of the New Jersey coast, the encroachment of the tides is equally rapid, a full mile having been washed away since the Revolution. During that period, according to the report of the State Geological Survey, a militia artillery company had its practising ground here. Their gun was placed near a house which stood just aside of the present shore line, and their target was set up three-quarters of a mile east. This last point was at the outer edge of the cultivated ground, between which and the water's edge there were sand-hills or beaches a quarter of a mile in extent. The whole of this is now gone; and one of the hotels has twice been moved inland, on account of the constant advance of the tide.

INSTANCES OF OVERFLOW.

Old observers upon the Atlantic and bay shores, all agree as to the gradual advance of the ocean upon the uplands. Narrow fringes of wood, which formerly skirted the marshes, have been killed by the salt water; and numerous islandsspaces of land found surrounded by salt marsh-which, within the memory of men now living, have been cultivated, and others which were in woods, have been entirely lost in the advancing marsh, and their location is only to be known by the shallowness of the mud which covers them. In all the salt marshes on this shore, stumps of trees, of the common species of the country, are found with the roots still fast in the solid ground at the bottom of the marsh, and this at depthis far below lowwater mark. Similar submerged forests, it may be incidentally remarked, are observed on the Massachusetts and other coasts.

THE RATE OF SUBSIDENCE.

The period during which this subsidence has been in progress, can not be estimated with any degree of accuracy. From the best evidence that can be gathered, it would seem to be certain that two feet in a hundred years is not above the rate at which the shore is now sinking.

; while other regions, such as Greenl, and parts of the Pacific and Indian eans, in which atolls or circular coral nds abound, are as gradually sinking." fessor Hitchcock, in his "Report on the logy of Massachusetts," mentions the e phenomena as exhibited there. Mr. ell, in his "First Visit to America," aking of the coast of Georgia, says: “I -n suspect that this coast is now sinking wn at a slow and insensible rate, for the is encroaching and gaining at many nts on the fresh-water marshes." Barm, the botanist, writing in 1792, testi1 that along the coasts of Carolina, orgia, and Florida, the tides encroach on marshes which were once high land, wered with forests.

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wash against the head-bank, the material is constantly wearing away, and depositing as a sand-bar or shoal, at some distance from the shore and parallel to it, leaving com paratively deep water contiguous to the land. The same configuration is among the peculiarities of the shores of Norway and Sweden. "If we suppose this to have occurred," says Professor Cook, “during the former depression of the land, a series of shoals would have formed parallel to the coast. When a rising of the land took place, these shoals would be raised above the surface of the water, and become the basis of the present beaches; shrubs and trees would soon grow on them, to protect their surface and catch the sand which would drift up from the strand. The lower ground back would finally be elevated above the water, and would be covered by vegetation, shrubs, and trees, until a subsequent depression of the surface should again carry them below the tide-level, when they would become salt marshes, filling up with sea deposits as the advancing tides would bring them in, and thus keeping their surface at high-water

mark."

INTERROGATING THE FUTURE.

These phenomena, which an inspection of this coast brings to our attention, are certainly interesting matter of study for scientific men, and we cannot any of us contemplate them without desiring to interrogate the future as to the probable results of the constant advances which the sea is making. Will hoar Neptune yet lift his trident, and float in his royal barge, where now it is all “dry land?" Will he yet assert his sway over the broad Newark meadows, or absorb into his domain the marshes on the shore of Long Island, or swallow up the seaside resorts where the multitude assembles, pleasure-seeking,

"In summer, when the days are long?"

These are inquiries, which, in view of what has gone before, may well engage our thought; questions of infinitely less moment have often, before now, set the schools by the ears, and given tomes of

II.

S primary teachers, we are expected to educate specially the perceptive powers, since these are the first in the order of development. The child, it is true, is exercising to a certain extent these powers as soon as he opens his wondering eyes upon the objects about him; but how soon he needs a helping hand! The little one is not competent to select proper nourishment for the development of each dawning faculty. Suitable aliment must be furnished the mind, as well as the body, to insure a healthful, harmonious growth. Is it not well to ask ourselves, then, if we are providing food for the various perceptive powers in the ordinary routine of primary teaching? Are we not starving some of them at the expense of others? Are we making our children quick and accurate observers? Are we cultivating language, teaching our little ones to observe and to express the result of their observations, in drawing in written and spoken language, by our ordinary methods? This can be done while we are accomplishing the very important end of teaching reading, spelling, and number. We should not, however, be too anxious to see primary pupils performing difficult examples in Long Division. To me it is painful to see a child six, seven, or eight years of age, puzzling over an example in arithmetic. We think the time thus spent might be more pleasantly and profitably employed. The process, at best, is mostly mechanical, and

rarely a natural or p early an age. We t five school-years sho

on in the developme fairly commenced. number, can be mad and rendered excee young children. But give exercise to all the are frequently taugh dency rather to dead The child's perceptio place, time, etc., are into exercise in the or Teachers who are i out the system calle are paying more atte and we believe compe visited the primary N. Y., the Normal So the Farnum Prepara erly, N. J., will bear results of this percept one is desirous of see thoroughly awake, w running brooks, sern good in every thing, pay a visit to one of t

Simply for the wa we term the improved instruction, Perceptiv ject teaching" seems since inanimate object and if the children ar fied, the name would to any other method

have misled some teachers. We find

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in the primary department who are e habit of presenting some object, and g a lengthened description of its parts, ties, etc., expecting the little ones to mber the information given. This be very well as an exercise for the ory. It may be an object lesson, but not a perceptive exercise; and as given ung children, we think it out of place. have object teaching" in all our er departments, when under the direcof successful teachers. All the higher ches are taught objectively when taught erly, and if the mind is prepared for ach teaching must be attended with t results. But how often do we hear hers complain that they are obliged to he work that should have been pered in the primary training! They are ged to resort to various measures for purpose of awakening observation and ing attention. Every teacher knows difficult a task it is to accomplish this, n the observing powers have not been berly exercised at the proper period. at we want, is, to be able to work hand and. We must prepare our children the good things in store for them. The

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reformation must commence in the primary department. Here the foundation is to be laid; and if properly laid, may we not hope to see the structure more substantially and beautifully completed? We do not wish to teach our children Natural Philosophy or Chemistry in the primary department, but we do wish to awaken the powers of mind which will naturally lead the child, at a proper time, to investigate and appreciate such studies, if he is never permitted to pursue them under the guidance of some learned professor. We shall have more self-made men and women, when these Perceptive Exercises are constituted a special feature of primary instruction. Perceptive Exercises are progressive, and given for the special purpose of developing the child's ideas of form, color, size, place, time, tune, number, etc., and nearly all of them are made lessons in reading, spelling, and language. We should teach our little ones to imitate and construct. They commence rudimentary drawing at an early age. We make natural readers, good spellers, ready calculators, fluent talkers, and. SHARP observers. How this is accomplished, we shall soon endeavor to show.

Our

HE Hon. Robert J. Walker, in two recent letters to the Continental Monthon the finances and resources of the ited States, communicates some exceedly interesting facts bearing upon the in=nce of free and slave labor upon the sperity of the country. He shows, by res drawn from the late census, the disFantages under which the Southern tes have labored by reason of the existze of slavery there.

le compares, in the first place, Maryland th Massachusetts, selecting Maryland bese that State has greater natural advanes, and because it has increased in poption per square mile more rapidly from 00 to 1860 than any other slaveholding

ate.

The subjoined extract will give a clear ea of the results to which Mr. Walker's ures tend.

Maryland has 11,124 square miles areaMassachusetts, 7,000 square miles; Maryland has a shore line, sea and river, of 1,336 miles-Massachusetts, 764 miles. In Maryland the rate of mortality is but 1 in 92; in Massachusetts, 1 in 57. The area of arable land in Maryland is more than double that of Massachusetts, and the soil more fertile. Maryland has inexhaustible mines of coal and iron, and the necessary fluxes; Massachusetts has no coal, no valuable mines of iron, nor fluxes. The population of Maryland in 1790 was 319,728; of Massachusetts, 378,717. In 1860 Maryland had 687,031-Massachusetts, 1,231,065. In seventy years Maryland increased 367,300; Massachusetts, 852,340, or more than double as much. In 1790 Maryland had 28 persons to the square mile-in 1860, 61; in 1790 Massachusetts had 48 to the square mile-in 1860, 157. Bear in mind

that Maryland has double the area of good land that Massachusetts has, and the enormous difference will be seen.

The value of the products of Massachusetts in 1860 was $287,000,000; of Maryland, $66,000,000. In Massachusetts it was $235 per head; in Maryland, $96. That is to say, the average annual value of the labor of each person in Massachusetts was greatly more than double that in Maryland. Massachusetts, with a smaller territory, had 1,340 miles of railroad-Maryland but 380. The value of all property, real and personal, was, in Massachusetts, $815,000,000; in Maryland, $376,000,000. Comparing this with the value of products before mentioned, the profit on capital was, in Massachusetts 35 per cent.-in Maryland, 17 per cent., or less than half; and it is a noticeable fact that in only two slave States, Delaware and Missouri, was the rate of profit larger than in Maryland, and both of these had comparatively fewer slaves.

If now we take intelligence as a standard, in Massachusetts the value of printed matter was in 1860, $2,905,916; in Maryland, $350,155. Massachusetts had 222 newspapers and periodicals, of which 112 were political, 31 religious, 51 literary, 28 miscellaneous; Maryland had only 57, all but one or two political. Massachusetts had 3,679 public schools; Maryland, 907. Massachusetts had 1,861 adults who could neither read nor write; Maryland, 38,426, exclusive of her slaves. Let free working men ponder these facts, and say under what system, whether of free or slave labor, they can earn the largest wages, or their children can receive the best education.

But Mr. Walker goes on to show a more remarkable fact that as Maryland is to Massachusetts, so is South Carolina to Maryland. He shows that in 1860 the product per head in Massachusetts was $235, in Maryland $96, in South Carolina $56; thus in free and educated Massachusetts the reward of labor is more than double that in Maryland, and four times that in South Carolina. "Slavery, then, the census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools, colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it to servitude, and decreasing by two-thirds the value of its products; hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal soul, and making it a

crime to teach mill read or write."

GRAY'S ELEGY I YARD.-Mr. Gray h the year 1750, and bis friend Horace V about for some time was received with deserved. It found zine, and this was t ing him known to fancy how his fas mind would be an stances which he th Walpole: "Cambri Yesterday I had the ing a letter from their bookseller exp taken the magazine hands. They tell m poem, called 'Refle Churchyard,' has be them, which they ar that they are informe of it is I, by name, a only his indulgence correspondence, etc. disposed either to b correspond as they bad way left to esc would inflict upon m obliged to desire you print it immediately without my name. 'Elegy written in a Co

Gray said: "The applauded, it is quite a mean not to be modest those who have said su about them, that I car

An early tribute t Elegy occurs in an Prof. Robinson, of Ed shipman on board th one of the fleet engag Quebec. He happene the boat in which Ge visit some of his posts battle, which was expe of the fate of the camp was fine; and the sce work they were engage ing to which they we sufficiently impressive along, the general, wit peated nearly the wh (which had appeared n was yet but little know sat with him in the ster ing, as he concluded, t fer being the author o glory of beating the Fr