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(including rent of office) $6,011.13; Queen's College (after deducting School fees and refunds) $21,665.92; Belilios Public School (after deducting school-fees) $2,787.59; fifteen other Departmental Schools $5,433.34; 106 Grant-in-Aid Schools $20,388.75; Physical Training $192.00; Government Scholarships, $2,867.80. The nett cost of education ($60,140.24) amounted in 1895 to 2.37 per cent. of the total Colonial Revenue (as compared with 2.07 per cent. in 1894, and 3.22 per cent. in 1893). As the total number of scholars under instruction in the Colony, during the year 1895, at the expense or with the aid of the Government (Police School excepted) was 7,816, the education of each scholar cost the Government $7.69, as compared with $7.66 in 1894 and $7.75 in 1893. In the several classes of educational institutions in the Colony, the cost to Government of the education of each scholar under instruction was as follows:-in Queen's College, $27.88; in Belilios Public School, $19.09; in the Departmental Schools, $5.64; in the Grant-in-Aid Schools $3.60. The Managers of those 106 Grant-in-Aid Schools who received from the Government in 1895, as Grants-in-Aid based on the definite results ascertained by the individual examination of each scholar (in the previous year), the sum of $20,388.75, expended during the year 1895 on those Schools, out of the resources of their respective Societies, supplemented in the case of seven Schools by school-fees, the sum of $56,213.04.

9. NATURE OF THE EDUCATION GIVEN IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE COLONY.-The vast majority of the residents of this Colony being Chinese, and having neither domestically nor commercially any use or demand for any but a Chinese education, the nature of the education given in the majority of local Schools is largely confined to the teaching of the Chinese classical language. This sort of teaching has considerable educative value, firstly, because it uses for its medium a dead language, as remote from Chinese vernaculars as Greek or Latin is from English, secondly because the Chinese classics are powerful exponents of that which takes, in the case of a Chinaman, the place of religion (as well as of a comparatively pure code of ethics), and thirdly because Chinese teachers sincerely believe in, and are instinct with, the spirit of their classics. This system of teaching, which by itself (as in the case of the Kaifong Schools) limits the mental and moral vision to the horizon which confined the mind of Confucius twenty-four centuries ago, cramps the intellect, stunts the growth of moral feeling and bends the will into antagonism to everything non-Chinese, is, in the case of our 106 Grant-in-Aid Schools, happily balanced by the teaching of Christianity and by the spirit of modern civilisation. Thus it is that even those Grant-in-Aid Schools which confine their operations to giving a classical (but Christian) Chinese education in the Chinese language only, are nevertheless administering a powerful and healthy educational stimulus. As to those local Schools (Grant-in-Aid Schools and Government Schools) which give a European education in the English language (or in Portuguese), it may be observed that their organisation, books, methods and European trained teachers are indeed admirably adapted to the religious and moral idiosyncrasies of children of European and Indian descent in this Colony, but that they have neither books, nor methods, nor organisation suitable for the mass of the Chinese children of this Colony. This defect is strongly felt by the Chinese population, and restrains the growth of a popular demand for an English education on the part of Chinese residents. Not until this defect is remedied will there be any possibility of ac- complishing the desire which at present animates the Government, viz., to promote English rather than Chinese education among the native population of Hongkong. During the year 1895, two thirds of our local Schools gave a Chinese education and one third a European education.

10. FEMALE EDUCATION.-Leaving the Police School with 340 scholars (men) out of considera- tion, but including Queen's College with its 1,024 scholars, the relative numbers of boys and girls under instruction in the Colony are found to have stood, in the year 1895, as under :-Government Schools 1,752 boys and 380 girls; Grant-in-Aid Schools, 3,091 boys and 2,593 girls; Kaifong Schools, 2,170 boys and 30 girls; Private Schools, 67 boys and 453 girls. In other words, among the whole number of scholars under instruction in the Schools of the Colony in the year 1895, the girls numbered only 32.80 per cent., as compared with 32.49 in the plague year 1894, and 37.90 per cent. in the year 1893. The only Schools in the Colony, attracting a fair proportion of girls, are the Grant-in-Aid Schools, in which the number of girls under instruction during the year 1895, amounted to 45.61 per cent.) That this is a very nearly normal proportion, may be inferred from the fact that, when the last Census was taken (in 1891), there were, among 29,899 children of school-going age in the Colony, 14,151 girls or 47.32 per cent.

11. NUMBER OF UNEDUCATED CHILDREN IN THE COLONY.-It is impossible, until the next Census is taken, to guage correctly the number of uneducated children in the Colony, as the official estimate of the population with regard to the year 1895 (244,930 people) makes insufficient or no allowance for the untold numbers of women and children who fled from the plague in 1894. There are no data to determine the proportion of fugitives who returned to the Colony in the year 1895. Certain it is that the Schools of the Colony suffered severely in consequence of an extraordinary retrogression of the population. Taking, however, the published estimate of the population, such as it is, for a basis, Table XIII., appended to this Report, indicates that as many as 22,038 children of school-going age (6 to 16 years) failed to attend school in the year 1895, viz., 10,076 boys and 11,962 girls. But as it is certain that a considerable number (say one half) of these boys and girls 6 to 16 years of age, though indeed not attending any School in 1895, owing to their having left school without going