striking any plane surface at a fair right angle, but exhibiting infinitely more irregularity in its course than even a body of water; how easily that may be deflected it is needless to state, the fact is obvious to any one who has watched the current of a tide or river. This attribute of water is, a fortiori, that of the more elastic fluid—air—and hence it is that I think it open to grave doubt whether, even if we grant that the wind may move at the immense velocity asserted, it really exerts that dynamical pressure, on a given plane area, which, cateris paribus, we should be led from such velocity to predicate. This paper already has exceeded due limit as to length, and I must defer the further investigation of the subject to a second paper.

Art. XXVIII.—Elements of Mathematics. By James Adams, B.A. [Read, before the Auckland Institute, 4th September, 1876.] When Peter the Great determined to rouse his subjects to the active life and business habits of the people of England and Prussia, he began by removing impediments. He wished his people to become skilful workmen and mechanics; and it was evident that the Russian of his time, with his long flowing robe and his pendulous beard, could not work at the forge or the bench. To remedy this, Peter stationed men at the city gates, each armed with a pair of shears, who cut off the long skirts and sacred beard of all those who passed through the gates. This was the first step in giving them a mechanical education, and the effect he produced, in raising his people to the level of other European nations, has always been a subject of admiration. A similar course was adopted, in the matter of education, after the French Revolution; when the School Commissioners dismissed, in a summary manner, the teachers of the schools and colleges, and flung after them, so to speak, the golden legends, controversial treatises, Aristotle's Ethics, and Euclid's Elements; not that they felt no reverence for these books, but because a new era had arrived, when practical knowledge had taken the place of speculative, and when it was of paramount inportance that the students should reach, by the shortest and plainest route, the wide range of learning that was now for the first time opened to the human mind. The object of education to their mind was to study the nature of things, with the view of adding to the comfort and happiness of man, and not to learn to dispute in the argumentative manner of ancient philosophers.