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frequently occur, and it appears that during the year a great
number of children were absent from this cause.
It is most important that schools should not be allowed
to be a means of spreading disease, by receiving children
affected with contagious diseases, or by admitting them too
speedily after their apparent recovery, and it is satisfactory to
know that children are not re-admitted to school after having
had contagious diseases without a certificate from the medical
man who has had such cases in charge, that recovery has
taken place, and that there is no danger of communicating
such diseases to the healthy.
Hut what a vast additional instrument for good the
School Hoard might become if children were instructed in
that most desirable of all information the means of preventing
the causes and the spread of disease, if they were
taught to fear the danger of want of personal cleanliness
(of which many of them are the constant witnesses), the
disadvantages and poison of intemperance; the danger of
overcrowding, the necessity for pure water and pure air; in
fact, if that sanitary knowledge which the poorer classes
especially require were instilled into the plastic minds of
young children. It strikes me that future generations would
reap incalculable benefit from such a course, and upon the
method of teaching in these schools will depend much of the
future sanitary progress of the country.
A large quantity of nutritious provision is annually
wasted amongst all classes in this country by careless and
wasteful manipulation in the process of cooking, and by the
rejection of articles of food which, if properly used, might
afford nourishment in the form of soup or otherwise.
The cost of meat supply is rendered greater to all classes
by the purchase of what are called "prime joints," whilst
other parts of the same animal, which are not known to most
householders by name, are termed inferior, but would afford
an equal amount of nutriment if carefully and tastefully
prepared.
Trades and arts are usually acquired by careful training
under the instruction of skilled masters, but no instruction is