the permanent danger of the unfortunate country. Only these two institutions, due entirely to individual initiative, are recorded in our scholastic annals during the three first centuries of the colony. The thirst and scent for gold reigned supreme. The sons of wealthy fami lies, in the absence of learning at home, sought schools and colleges in foreign parts (in this century). On their return, with the patriotic zeal natural to cultured men, they endeavored to better the intellectual condition of their compatriots. This enforced emigration of Cubans in quest of learning was fought against by our government. The children of Cuban families were forbidden to be educated in foreign countries. This despotic measure was adopted without any honest effort being made to establish schools for instructing the children of a population already numbering nearly 500,000 souls.

"The Sociedad Económica was founded in 1793, during the time of Las Casas, whose name has always been venerated among Cubans. Then, as now, the members of this association were the most talented men of the country, and their best efforts were directed toward promoting public instruction. It gave impulse and organization to the school system in Cuba; it established inspections, collected statistics, and founded a newspaper to promote instruction and devoted its profits to this cause; it raised funds and labored with such zeal and enthusiasm that it finally secured the assistance of the colonial government and obtained an appropriation, though but of small amount, for the benefit of popular instruction.

"In 1793 there were only 7 schools for boys in the capital of Cuba, in which 408 white and 144 free colored children could be educated. From this privilege the slaves were debarred. The seven schools referred to, besides a number of seminaries for girls, afforded a means of livelihood for a number of free mulattoes and some whites. The schools were private undertakings paid for by the parents. Only one, that of the reverend Father Senor, of Havana, was a free school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught in these schools. Lorrenzo Lendez, a mulatto of Havana, was the only one who taught Spanish grammar. The poor of the free colored classes were on a par with the slaves. The Sociedad Económica founded two free schools, one for each sex. The bishop, Felix José de Tres Palacios, nullified the laudable efforts of the country's wellwishers by maintaining that it was unnecessary to establish more schools. From 1793 to 1893 the society was unable to accomphish even a part of its noble purpose-it was found impossible to obtain an official sanction of popular education. In 1817 there were 90 schools in the rest of the island-19 districts-all, or nearly all, founded by private individuals. In 1816 the section of education of the Sociedad Económica was established. It afforded a powerful impulse to the cause of education, thanks to the influential support of the governor, Don Aliquando Ramirez. The schools improved, the boys and girls, both white and black, were

taught separately, literary contests were opened, annual examinations were made obligatory, prizes were distributed, and a powerful incentive was created among all classes for the cause of education. But the concessions attained for the society by the influence of Ramirez were revoked by royal order of February, 1824. In this year the municipality of Havana loaned the Sociedad Patriótica $100 for schools.

"In 1826 there were only 140 schools in the island, of which 16 were free, and in 1827 the society obtained $8,000 per annum for the estab lishment and maintenance of new schools. In 1836 there were only 9,082 children receiving elementary instruction in the whole island. In 1860 the number of schools had increased to 283 for whites and 2 for colored, yet the attendance was proportionately less than in 1836, owing to the increase in population. Popular instruction was neglected or despised by deputy governors (military).

"The reformed course of studies of 1863 did not improve the condition of the schools, and the secretary of the governor made recommendations that virtually tended to keep the population in ignorance in order to keep it Spanish. In 1883 the schools numbered as follows:

"But the teachers were not paid and public instruction was neglected." This work gives a list of names of wealthy Cubans, both men and women, who have founded colleges and schools, and of societies which have the promotion of education for their object. The author adds. that the clergy are indifferent in this matter. There is not one parish which supports a free or endowed school.

The preamble of a decree reforming education in Cuba was published in the Official Gazette of Havana November 17, 1871, and a translation of it is given in an appendix in the work just quoted. On account of its historical interest we give a summary of a portion of the preamble. It states that the insurrection of 1868 was due to the bad system of education; that while the old methods were slow the new are prompted by eagerness for hurry, and the child is taught a number of things, whereas its mind is unable to comprehend many things at a time. A number of subjects should therefore be suppressed. Balmés is quoted as the authority for the psychology and pedagogy of the preamble. The latter goes on to say that this haste to teach many things has made religious instruction secondary to that of the arts and sciences, a fatal error which has produced fatal consequences. It refers to statistics to

show that crime has increased with education, and states that Aimé Martin found the remedy for this evil in educating instead of merely instructing. But as there were many religious sects, Martin unfortu nately selected an irreligious religion as the means of educating, and consequently there was no decrease in crime. Señor Lasagra is quoted to prove that suicides are more numerous in Protestant than in Catholic countries, and more so in the capitals than elsewhere. This is due to too great individual freedom of thought and consequent changes in social and economic conditions, which have produced dissatisfaction, despair, and suicide. Philosophical and religious sects have multiplied, and the multiplicity of these has always and everywhere produced doubt and skepticism, which in their turn have engendered a materialism whose only offspring is disbelief in virtue and morality. Under its influence some are tortured with unhappiness, without hope of the future, while others are filled with envy. Religious instruction had been too much neglected or too carelessly performed, and the real remedy would consist in Christianizing or Catholicizing education, by putting the government and municipal machinery of education in the hands of the religious teaching orders, when the evil would disappear. It goes on to say, with severe condemnation of the schools where they had taught, that many of the insurgents had been teachers, and mentions particularly the school formerly conducted by José de la Luz. Instruction must be supplemented by moral and religious education, and great care should be taken to prevent access to (politically) evil literature. Even in text-books of elementary geography, it declares, have wicked doctrines been inserted. In one of them we read that the greatest event of the present century in America was the revolt of Bolivar. "See under what seductive forms the minds of children are predisposed to treason." The preamble concludes by recommending a greater scope to religious instruction, the suppression of private teaching, and placing the plans of studies under the Catholic clergy.

There is a number of learned societies in Havana, and Mr. A. P. C. Griffin, of the Library of Congress, has published a list of 33 whose publications are received in Washington. By means of these publicatious and separate works, like the History of Pezuela and the Natural History of Sagra, the history of Cuba, its natural history (land and marine fauna, mineralogy, and botany), ethnology, and geology have been made known, while the meteorology of the region has been investigated by the observatory, whose work is known all over the scientific world. The number of medical journals is noticeable, and Vol. XXXIV (August and September, 1897) of the Anales de la Real Sociedad de Ciencias Médicas, Físicas y Naturales (the only specimen at hand), contains four articles on medical subjects, viz, a criticism by Dr. Santos Fernandez upon certain experiments with the X-rays upon a blind person, another upon the bacillus of the tuberculosis of Koch, and the two others are experimental studies connected with typhoid fever. The

remaining article of the number is a long and masterly account of the discovery of argon and prediction of helium, by Dr. Gaston Alenso Cuadrado. The Revista Cubana contains able articles upon general philosophical, historical, and other subjects, besides those of especial interest on Cuba. The paper upon elementary education by Señor Rodriguez, which we have used, was published in that review. Judging from the titles of the periodicals we should say that there is little of mechanical or electrical engineering or "applied science" in them, for which there is probably no demand in Cuba, while the exhaustive mathematical treatment of such subjects (especially that which was "made in Germany," like much recent "American science") has been imported into the United States in the last twenty-five or thirty years, where there is a field and demand for it. But for a population of 200,000 souls, including many blacks, the number of scientific, educational, and literary periodicals in Havana is remarkable, and they contain valuable original articles.

To sum up, therefore, the educational condition in Cuba, the evidence shows that the higher education is of a superior character; the study of the humanities has borne its usual fruit in literary taste and culture, and Cuba has given birth to poets who have attracted attention and won the praise of European critics. In recent years the sciences, with such technical applications as are adapted to the needs of a community which is not a manufacturing one, have been culti vated, and the enlightened part of the public has been kept informed of European philosophy and progress-all this with scant aid from, and sometimes despite the opposition of, the government. Elementary public instruction, on the other hand, has been and is in a very backward state, partly on account of the social condition of the island, but principally on account of the apathy and often the actual hostility of the government toward any serious attempts at improvement.

II. THE PHILIPPINES.

The character of the population of the Philippine archipelago is vastly different from that of Cuba and Porto Rico. In the latter colonies the aboriginal inhabitants had become extinct by the end of the first century of Spanish occupancy, and their place as laborers was taken by negro slaves, whose supply was replenished from time to time, but particularly between 1762, the period of the English occupation of Havana, and the middle of this century. The whites, however, form the majority of the population in Cuba, while in the Philippines the vast majority of the population is composed of the native races, the Spaniards and other whites forming only an insignificant proportion of the whole. The population of the group is given at a little over 7,000,000, while the total civilian Spanish population, including creoles, amounts to less than 10,000. The native population is composed of two grand divisions, the Tagales and the Visayas, who are of Malay stock, and a small number of Negritos who, it is agreed upon all hands, were the original inhabitants of the islands. But the mingling of the different Malay tribes with the Negritos and with each other, in the long course of centuries, has produced innumerable varieties of dialects and customs, character and form, to which the Chinese, who, aside from their mestizos, now number 100,000 souls, have contributed their share, until a large number of tribes is now recognized with distinct languages, which run into dialects so subdivided that among the wild tribes of the Negritos and other mountain men, isolated family groups have been found with a dialect of their own. Jagor (Reisen in den Philippinen), following a Spanish authority, gives a list of over thirty languages and dialects spoken in the different islands. The Tagales and Visayas, who are Christianized, are all called Indians by

In the Historia General de Filipinas, Tome III, p. 535, Señor Montero y Vidal gives the following interesting table of the Philippine dialects and the number of natives using them, published in 1869. But there is necessarily much difficulty in obtaining such statistics, and different authors give different figures: