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Geammae and Composition.—Grammar, like arithmetic, was very weak, especially in the higher standards. Pupils—above all, those of the Fourth Standard—showed little familiarity with inflections, and ignorance of analysis was often responsible for failures in parsing. Thus, participial phrases were almost invariably taken as principal sentences, and the infinite parts of the verb as finite. In the Sixth Standard pupils seldom recognized the clause, or in the Fifth the participial enlargement. In Standard IV. words were classified according to their general function, not according to their function in the sentence under treatment, with the usual result. In Standard 111. the pronoun seemed the great trouble. I should like to see more attention paid to analysis than at present. All educational authorities are unanimous in their opinion that the teaching of English grammar should begin with the sentence. " Moreover, if the parts of speech are to be properly taught, the analysis of sentences should come forward at the very beginning."— Bain. " And hence the way to teach English grammar is to begin with the sentence, because that is something known, and to proceed analytically." — Fitch. " What is wanted is to get as quickly as possible a notion of the structure of the sentence and of the logical relations of its parts."— Fearon. Composition was generally very poor throughout the district. In the Third Standard, where the subject is first demanded, it would appear to be almost entirely neglected. A few words were strung together, often without any verbs, capital letters were either absent or in the wrong places, and there was no punctuation. In the higher standards I was frequently confronted with such horrible expressions as "I write these few lines," "There is a good few," "There is lots; " and pupils filled up their exercise with informing me that they had several subjects, and selected a certain one, and that they did not know much about it, but would tell me more next time. Letters were seldom begun, ended, or addressed correctly. Copies of official, social, and commercial letters should be hung up in the school-rooms, and children occasionally asked to bring a letter on note-paper in an addressed envelope. Pupils should be trained to put down in writing their own thoughts on familiar objects. It was nothing unusual to find children living by the side of the Wanganui, Bangitikei, or Manawatu Bivers unable to write anything about one of them. Beproduction of ißsop's Fables, stories in the readingbooks, and suchlike is not composition, and is very prevalent in the district. I am of opinion that composition, or synthesis, and analysis should be taught together, and might be begun even in the Second Standard, where the pupil might be asked to write simple statements about nouns on the black-board ; and the fact that these statements consisted of two parts, the thing written of and what was written about it, would be educed. In the next standard these simple sentences would be connected, and so the compound sentence formed, while the subject and object would be enlarged, and the definition of the adjective obtained. In the succeeding standards the noun in apposition, the participial phrase, the nominative, absolute, and the other various enlargements and extensions would make their appearance, and in fine the substitution of clauses for simple subjects and objects, adjectival phrases, &c, would be treated. When this system is pursued the pupil, having some knowledge of his material, can build a readable composition exercise ; otherwise, it appears to me, •his best efforts will show only a succession of simple sentences, generally commencing with the pronouns " it" and " they." The habit of writing nouns in the plural with "s " was an almost universal error both in grammar and composition, while the apostrophe was generally omitted in the possessive case. Geogeaphy.—The work in geography bore remarkable evidence of undigested cram, especially in the Fourth and Fifth Standards, which the papers did not suit. Thus, the features of one ocean were given for those of another, the Asiatic countries washed by the Indian Ocean for those washed by the Pacific, and suchlike. In the Second Standard the geography in some schools was excellent ; but in a few schools pupils did not appear to have touched it, and in very many definitions were gabbled by rote, and children that could define an island could not mention one on the globe —not even the North Island of New Zealand. I have already written of the slate-work in the Third Standard ; but here I also examined orally, and had I not passed those that answered fairly, apart from their written work, few indeed would have been successful. In the Sixth Standard acquaintance with the position of places of commercial importance was generally very good. Mapping was often poor, and I cannot call to mind more than half a dozen schools where anything was known of the mathematical and physical portion of the work. Even to spell the names of zones was beyond most Fourth Standards. Teachers, I think, pin their faith too much on textbooks. Thus I was frequently asked, " What books would you recommend for teaching geography in Standards 11., 111., and IV. ?" None at all for the ordinary geographical lessons, but reading lessons might be given in Nelson's books to create an intellectual taste for the subject. Children should get their first ideas of geography from their own neighbourhood, and the whole should be pictorial and descriptive. The teacher should freely use his wall-maps and the black-board, and the pupils their atlases. Outline-maps should be drawn on the black-board, and the subject-matter filled in during- the progress of the lesson. Maps done by pupils should be always drawn to scale, and after the lines of latitude and longitude have been marked. Too much should not be attempted in one lesson, as is often the case with this subject, and the work of each day should be connected. Nelson's excellent Geographical Readers have now been recommended for use in the schools. As, however, they do not consist merely of an analysis of the work of the standards, they will not, I am afraid, be popular with many teachers. Histoey.—As a rule the results in history were very poor, except in the Sixth Standard and occasionally in the Fifth, from which I sometimes received fair answering. I took a very lenient view of the work in the Third Standard, as it extends over the whole range of English history, and is, I find, beyond the grasp of the majority of children. There is, however, no excuse for pupils in many schools being unable to write out the periods and spell the names of them correctly. Some change in the history requirements for this standard is urgently needed. At present they only tend to encourage superficial, untidy work, the evil effects of which will be afterwards felt. In the Fourth Standard, though I was again very lenient, failures were abundant, many of which