admission, as they were before the war, for want of room in the buildings.

Michigan is an agricultural State; but whether agriculture will always remain our leading interest, admits of doubt. Our iron and copper mines are inexhaustible in supply, and unsurpassed in quality. Our forests will, for a hundred years yet, be a source of immense wealth. A large portion of the State contains excellent beds of coal, and our petroleum-wells will soon be flowing. Already we rival the Empire State in the manufacture of salt, and we can equal any State in the production of fruit. With all these advantages, manufactures can not be kept in the background. Many a city in the land would be glad to

exchange its debt fo Our common school in the third year of fore. We have sent men to the field, yet thrive within our bo

In all the varied the Agricultural Coll prepare our young none of them, will t sued, be found other advantageous.

We wish your rea derstand that Michig ous, patriotic, and inte for seven years, had a in successful operatio

THE Training School for primary teachers, established by an act of the Legislature of the State of New York, will go into operation on the 18th of April, under the direction of Superintendent Sheldon. The appropriation for the purpose is, we believe, $5,000 per year, the buildings being furnished by the citizens of Oswego. The following is a synopsis of the plan of the school, kindly furnished by Mr. Sheldon.

Course of Instruction.-This will consist, 1st, in Instruction in Methods; 2d, Instruction in the Natural Sciences; and 3d, what may be more strictly termed Professional Instruction.

I. Under the first head will be included instruction in methods of presenting Form, Size, Weight, Color, Number (including Arithmetic), Language (including Grammar), Reading, Spelling, Drawing, Geography; also of giving lessons in Objects, including lessons on Animals and Plants, and the Human Body.

This instruction will be accompanied with Model Lessons, illustrating fully the methods at every point. In addition to this, the pupils will be required to observe and practise one-half of each day in the Model and Practising Schools, of which there is one for each grade, including the first five years of the child's school-life. The school will be divided into two sections, one of which will be in recitation while the other

is in the Practising half the time is given other half to instructi

II. The Instruction ences, will include Zo ogy, Mineralogy, and haps Physiology. Th these is regarded as es success of the teacher sued.

III. In Professional included Mental and School History, Orga pline.

Terms of Admission an examination will be metic, Grammar, G Reading; also in Alge ratic Equations, Geom History of the United

In the last three n examination will be les the former. Fifty P answers is required.

SCHOOLS OF NEW Y nual report of S. S. Ra ent of the New York ci states that there are, un risdiction of the Board grammar-schools for b for boys and girls, 47 pr 42 primary schools, 2 g

e number of teachers employed in the al schools during the year, was 1,934; hom 200 were males, and the remain1,734, females.

ne superintendent gives a detailed acat of the character, progress, and prescondition of the several schools in each d. The number of pupils taught in award, ranges from 425 in the second, 3,738 in the twentieth. He again urges establishment of a normal school for training of teachers, together with a -school for girls. More attention to sical culture is recommended, and the nishing of the large halls, basements, I playgrounds, attached to each school, h all the necessary apparatus requisite this purpose, as a measure beneficial to alth, and preventive of premature disse, the danger of which is imminent m the confinement of pupils for six urs of each school-day.

The report of Assistant Superintendent lkins gives an account of the course of dy, and of the general condition of the imary schools and departments. He so sets forth the need of a well-organized caining School, for educating teachers in e principles and methods of teaching, as e greatest want for securing improveent in primary instruction. "What our achers most need," he truly says, "is ot greater scholarship than may be obained in the present course of instruction the grammar-schools, but the knowledge f how to teach children what they themelves know. Nine teachers fail from the ack of knowing how to teach, to one that ails from lack of book-knowledge."

Mr. Calkins gives a detailed account of the process of teaching pursued, and pre

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tion of the Board, with the view of improving the mode of instruction in the primary schools. He calls attention to the want of more primary schools; and states that nearly every primary school and department in the city is now crowded to excess, and that there are about 40,000 children in the city, over four years of age, who do not attend any school.

The reports of Assistant Superintendents Kiddle, Jones, and Seton, also present interesting views in relation to instruction in the schools.

GENERAL BANKS has laid off the territory under his jurisdiction, in Louisiana, into school-districts, and is organizing a system of common-school instruction for the children, as well as a free paid labor system for the adult population of that sunny clime. General Banks is a statesman, as well as a soldier. He knows how to organize the forces of a free, peaceful, and happy community, as well as those for the stern work of grim-visaged war. shall watch with the deepest interest this process of reorganization in Southern society.

Wo

ABOUT a year ago the Massachusetts Legislature adopted a resolution authorizing the governor to appoint a commission to inquire into the expediency of establishing a State military academy. The commission was appointed, consisting of the Hon. Edward Everett, John M. Fessenden, an old graduate of West Point, Wm. S. Clark, formerly a professor at Amherst College, and for a while an officer in a Massachusetts volunteer regiment, and they have recently submitted their report for the action of the Legislature. The report, evidently written by Mr. Everett, is brief and comprehensive. By visits to West Point and the Naval Academy at Newport, and correspondence with our ministers at London and Paris relative to institutions for military education in Europe, the commissioners have collected a large amount of information, which they have not had time to arrange and submit in detail yet, but which is promised hereafter. The results to which they have arrived may be state-l briefly thus: They are of the opinion that

drill into our colleges, academies, and schools of a higher grade, though useful to a certain extent, would not meet the demands of the country and the times; that whatever the immediate complexion of the future may be, it will bring with it an imperative call for a more systematic, extensive, and effective development of the military power of the country than has yet taken place; that for the increase of the means of military education the people of Massachusetts must for the present and for some time to come rely upon their own resources; that private military academies are not organized on a basis sufficiently comprehensive for all branches of military education; and that difficulty would exist in the want of authority to govern them by martial law. The commissioners, therefore, recommend the establishment of a military academy for the State of Massachusetts, at which provision shall be made for the education of about two hundred young men of suitable age, to be divided into three classes, being at the present time one annually for every twenty-one hundred of the population of the State. They contemplate a first-class institution. A high standard of qualification for admission is proposed; and the practice of competitive examinations will require the schools at which the candidates are prepared to aim in their turn at an elevated standard. The military and naval schools of the United States labor under a disadvantage in this respect of qualification, as their pupils, for paramount public reasons, are taken in geographical proportion from every part of the Union; and it follows that the requisite qualifications of candidates for admission cannot rise above the state of education in any part of the country. In view of this high and uniform standard, a three years' course may be substituted for the four years' course at West Point. The commissioners estimate that such an institution as they propose can be put in operation for about $175,000, and carried on at an annual expense of about $56,000.Round Table.

COMMON SCHOOLS IN MICHIGAN.-The School Reports of 1863 in Michigan show an increasing prosperity in every respect.

More children, mor means are reported year. And in but on length of the schools that only one-tenth More money was rai ation, and less by the ever before. It is qui sending about one in population to chastis has not forgotten that must not be divorced.

The number of cl tween five and twer 273,620; an increase 12,297. This shows lation of about 38,000. ber, 216,144 attended in addition to which reported in private s considered how many active duties of life a age, the conclusion is Michigan is raising v citizens.

The number of grade is 124. In these scho number several thousa cipals receive salaries In the State the avera male teachers, $28.17 females, $12.42. The teachers was 8,825; length of the schools tenth months.

The amount paid f was $520,012. The tot for the year were $828, $130,000 was from a fund; $277,000 from a mills on the dollar of pr and nearly all of the re voluntary taxation by 4,382 several districts. prosperity of the schoo from this may be infe State) in the fact that ported on hand at the cl $21,000 more than in th

The value of school-b $1,868,000. Several dist houses that cost from $ each. One district has that cost $50,000.

e preparation of teachers, the State a Normal School at an annual exabout $13,000, at which 406 were dance during the year. About local State Teachers' Institutes, of ek each, are also held annually by e Superintendent of Public Instruc

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tion, where, in the last four years, over 6,000 teachers have received special training.

Such statistics as these, from a State yet but little more than "out of its teens," ought to rejoice the hearts of educators in other States, and excite them to renewed efforts throughout the land.

M-GLASS.—A very simple and usetrument for indicating changes of ather, may be constructed of a glass bout ten inches long and threes of an inch in diameter, having its covered with a piece of bladder, ated with a needle. The tube must tly filled with a mixture of two as of camphor, half a drachm of pure re, and half a drachm of sal-ammoulverized and mixed with about two s of proof-spirits. It is usually susd by a thread near a window, and nctions of its contents are as follows: atmosphere is dry, and the weather ses to be settled, the solid parts of mphor in the liquid contained in the will remain at the bottom, and the above will be quite clear; but on proach of a change to rain, the solid r will gradually rise, and small crysstars will float about in the liquid. e approach of high winds, the solid of the camphor will rise in the form ves, and appear near the surface in a resembling fermentation. These inons are sometimes manifested twentyhours before a storm breaks out! e cause of these indications is as yet own; but the leading principle is the ility of camphor in alcohol, and its ubility in water, combined with the that the drier the atmosphere the aqueous vapor does it take up, and

tersa.

HE POWER OF SCIENCE.-It has long known that the solar spectrum is sed by fine, dark lines. Upon careful mination, it has been found that the

light proceeding from all incandescent bodies, have similar lines, but each substance gives its own peculiar arrangement to them. Thus we have a new method of chemical analysis; and so delicate is this test, that several new metals have been discovered by it in substances which had been repeatedly analyzed, with the utmost care, by the old methods. It has recently been applied to the light of the heavenly bodies with such success, as to make it probable that we shall soon be able to determine the chemical composition of even the fixed stars!

A STRIKING evidence of the slowness with which knowledge is diffused, is furnished by the frequent occurrence, in receipts for cooking, of directions to boil slowly, or to boil rapidly, for some specified length of time. It should at this day be known, that any thing will cook just as quickly in water boiling as slowly as possible, as it will in water boiling with the greatest fury. Water, under the pressure of the atmosphere and at the level of the sea, boils at 212° Fah.; and as long as it is open to the air, no fire, however fierce, will heat it a single degree above this temperature. If we close the vessel, however, with an air-tight cover, so as to increase the pressure upon the surface of the liquid, we may heat it to any degree whatever. But, as the pressure increases with the temperature, the strength of the boiler must be increased in the same proportion. On the other hand, if the pressure of the air on the surface of the water is diminished by raising the vessel above the surface of the earth, the water will boil at

takes longer to boil potatoes on the top of a mountain than at its base, because boiling water at the top of the mountain is not so hot as at its base. In sugar refineries, it is desirable to boil down the sirup at a low temperature, in order to avoid burning the sugar. This is effected by putting the sirup into an air-tight boiler, and draining out a portion of the air from the space above the sirup, by means of an air-pump worked by a steam-engine. Such a boiler is called a vacuum-pan, and is used in many other operations besides the refining of sugar.

MINERAL salt is now brought in ballast from Russia; it sells for $20 a tun. It is mined in blocks, that to the eye appear to be quartz. A thirty-pound block of it, placed in a box in a field, will supply a herd of cows for some weeks. It is as hard as stone. Ordinary salt would dissolve in one-fourth the time. No other country yet known yields this peculiar product. It is quarried precisely as we quarry marble.

LIGHT from petroleum costs about onethird as much as the same quantity from gas, at New York prices; and the petroleum light is better for the eyes, and of superior quality in every respect. essential, however, to use a shade upon the lamp. Otherwise, it is, if possible, worse for the eyes than gas.

It is

Its

TUNGSTEN AND ITS ALLOYS.-Some important and interesting experiments have lately been made in France, by order of the Minister of War, to determine the influence produced by tungsten upon gunmetal, steel, and cast-iron, when combined with them and forming alloys. Tungsten is one of the rare metals, which the great majority of persons have never seen. name signifies "heavy stone," and it is also called wolfram. In its native state it is found as an ore, associated with iron, manganese, sulphur, and arsenic. It is reduced from the ore by fusion with carbon, and with a current of hydrogen gas. In the metallic state it is difficult of fusion, hard, brittle, and gray in color. There is only one mine of tungsten ore in France. When roasted, the sulphur and arsenic are

driven off, leaving combined with the ments, which were satisfactorily prove cent. of tungsten v the grain of the latt and there was grea ited. The additio tungsten to steel, and tenacity. A st ing that amount of to severe tests, an charges of powder, any other steel barr sions tested. M. C employment of tung to improve its qualit

Ir is easy enoug and to burn the visi which we term smo tion can indeed alwa skillful fireman; bu of combustion have consumed in any in of. It is therefore underground railroa yet be used for prop ilar to that used by patch Company. Ti purposes, is a subject vestigation.

FROM a given we under combustion, a steam can be generat weight of any other A pound of pure carb pounds of water, and of 15 pounds pressure One pound of good cite is capable of rais ter, at 212° Fah., into

THERE is now in o tric Telegraph Comp an instrument, which, construction and pert serves attention. Th mit autograph messag in which they are wri complicated figures, d indeed any thing that ordinary pen, are tran the simplest dot or str