mathematics. Perhaps the fundamental difference between the practical inventive work of the country boy and the theoretical curriculum, along which the city boy is induced in his studies, may be roughly expressed as the difference between teaching the power of thought and the power of memory. No one will deny, I am sure, that it is preferable to know a little by reason, than much by rote.

Of course we must not lose sight of the fact that some few minds have a powerful penchant for the things and lessons of the past, and that we should recognize and carefully classify the types of minds as early as possible in order that they may not be artificially directed along wrong channels.

"Among all the movements of thought," writes F. Hodson, "the first was the classical renaissance: the second the study of natural science. Each has worked in the main upon different materials, the one upon the texts and monuments of antiquity, the other upon nature closely scrutinized and comprehensively observed."

Let us have no objection whatever to the renaissance or other culture studies for the type of mind that is found to crave them, and let us have no objection to adding to these culture studies certain of the fancy frills of higher mathematics.

Dr. G. W. Thompson writes in this connection: "I believe that our universities and colleges should, all of them, turn more to the practical aspects of education. think only of its cultural side.

Many of them

Culture is de

sirable; no one questions this; but culture is not incompatible with an education that suits a man for the practical affairs of life."

It is customary to point out how very accuate one becomes who is trained in the higher mathematics, and I will concede that some, of course, excel in this connection, but on the other hand, many become as primly precise and impractically accurate as the illustrious old mathematician who owned a cat and a kitten. This old fellow was so exact that he is said to have cut a large hole in his fence, through which the cat could go to and fro, and then he cut a small hole, in order that the kitten might follow its mother in her little excursions.

In attacking the often unnecessary teaching of the higher mathematics, and the real lack of practical use to the great majority of those who have studied them in after life, I am fully aware that its advocates always bring up the hackneyed battery of arguments of precise mental training; but I shall attack what I believe to be the wasteful and overdone teaching of higher mathematics, nevertheless, because I am certain that there are other sciences far more