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children great trouble when they reach the higher standards and have to do parsing and analysis according to the rules of the Portuguese Grammar. There is altogether great need for a reform in the vernacular teaching of these Schools, because a slovenly colloquial form of speech, deficient in accidence and syntax, habituates the mind to slovenly thought and deteriorates force of character. If it is ne- cessary for Portuguese children, as I am convinced it is, that they should first learn to express their thoughts in their own language before they commence the study of English, they surely ought to be taught, both in school and at home, to express their thoughts in a grammatically correct form of Portuguese, though it need not be the classical language of CAMÕENS.

8. FEMALE EDUCATION.-Female education, though still in a backward condition, continues to extend in scope and to improve as regards the quality of the education given. Among the 2,293 scholars under instruction in Government Schools, during the year 1889, there were indeed only 141 girls as compared with 129 in the year 1888, but in the Grant-in-Aid Schools there were, in 1889, among a total of 4,814 scholars as many as 1,975 girls as compared with 1,787 girls in 1888. There is evidently a steady improvement in the proportion of girls and boys under instruction, but there is yet a great deal to be done before a normal state of things is reached. There are yet vast numbers of girls in the Colony, who do not come under instruction at present, not on account of any deficiency in our educational system, but on account of the usefulness of the children for domestic service. The greatest defaulters in the matter of school attendance are those Chinese girls who are purchased servants, owned by Chinese families and employed within the family as nursery maids. I have in former Reports repeatedly suggested, as the only remedy I can think of, registration of these purchased servant girls, coupled with a regulation that girls so registered should be sent to school for a certain number of years (say as half-timers). But legislation concerning family life is always a delicate and risky matter; moreover class legislation, as this would be, is objectionable as a matter of policy; and to apply the principle of compulsory school attendance, even in this limited form, before we have schools enough to accommodate such girls is evidently premature. But if it were possible to do anything by way of legislation, in some unobjectionable form, say in the direction of applying the root principle of the English Factory Acts to all the various forms of utilizing child labour, rampant in the Colony whether in domestic or extra-mural employment, and without regard to any particular nationality, a most powerful stimulus would be provided to increase school attendance especially among the girls of the Colony. Such a law need not interfere with the rights of parents, but it should limit the rights of the owners of purchased children (without specially mentioning them) by regulat- ing the rights of employers of child labour. The labour of children has, of late, repeatedly been made the subject of legislative enactment in England, by a series of statutes eventually consolidated in the Factory and Workshops Act (1878), ensuring the attendance at school of children employed in factories and workshops, and legislation as to the employment of stage children is at present under public consideration in England. The recognition of the right of the State entirely to prohibit the labour of children under a certain age (now fixed at 10 years) and to regulate the hours and conditions of their employment up to a certain further age (now 14 to 16 years), and the recognition of the duty of the nation to secure at least the rudiments of education to every child subject of the Crown, constitutes the basis of the Factory and Workshops Acts and of the Education Acts. I do not advocate the introduction in this Colony of a compulsory education law. There is no need for it. But the employ- ment of purchased children in domestic service, and the employment of children in carrying building materials up the hill, and in other forms of public labour, seems to me to call for legislation such as would naturally stimulate the school attendance of children who at present receive no education at all and notably of the female bond-servants permanently sold or temporarily pledged as security for money lent.

9. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE.-The question how to stimulate school attendance generally, so as to reduce the number of children remaining uneducated in the Colony, occupied a good deal of the time and attention of the Government during the year 1889. Apart from the consideration given to the above mentioned question of legislation, arrangements were made by the Registrar General's Department to arouse, through the mediation of the District Watchmen, the attention of Chinese parents to the necessity of school attendance, and to urge them to send all their children to school. This measure has already caused a considerable increase of attendance, but the fruits of this movement cannot actually be measured until the close of next year. Further also arrangements were made to convert, in the course of next year, all the Aided Schools in the Villages into free Government Schools. These elementary Chinese Village Schools were hitherto aided by the Government by a fixed monthly grant of five dollars, and the villagers were supposed to provide a school house and to supplement the teacher's salary by a monthly payment (in kind) amounting in value to another five dollars. In reality, however, the villagers, in most cases, mulcted the teacher to the extent of one dollar a month as compensation for house rent and threw the remainder of their obligation on the parents of children attending school, who used to pay school fees at the rate of three cents and three catties of rice a month and to provide the school furniture. The consequence was that the inhabitants of the smaller villages, comparatively the poorest class in the Colony, had to pay heavily for elementary Chinese education, whilst in the town and in four of the larger villages elementary Chinese and elementary English education is offered free of any charge, both by Government Schools and by Grant-in-Aid Schools. Arrangements have now been made to give henceforth in all the Village