house, magnified in dimensions. There are a good many large windows, and in most of the rooms the light is tolerable, or sufficient; but where the children face the windows (as in the master's room, No. 1 up-stairs), blinds have to be closed, and a deficiency exists. The interior is old and worn; 'new floors and some new furniture are desirable. The floor of room No. I was very dirty and neglected. The mud is brought in by the children after playing in the yard and streets.

The ratio of density of this school population, is given in the following table:

The disproportion is enormous between the amount of space allowed for the different classes. The room which stands at the foot of the list is far the worst. It was formerly a lumber-room, and has been converted to its present use very recently. The attendance in this room varies from 35 to 80. It is simply impossible to ventilate it properly without causing dangerous draughts. Nothing in the way of assisting ventilation is done in the entire house, except by opening windows; and they were found open here also. The room is less than ten feet high, and less than ten feet wide; draughts and colds are prevalent, and the visitors found, as it seemed, one-half of the children coughing or sneezing.

There are four stoves on the first floor. One is a small one, for the sole use of the room just mentioned. The others stand in the other rooms, each provided with a jacket for the purpose of collecting the foul air from said rooms and sending it up through a pipe to warm the rooms on the second floor, which have no other means of heating. In one of these upper rooms the teacher said the children suffered much from headache.

Upon a rough estimate, nearly twice the present number of children under sixteen require accommodations in the public school of this district. A new house is urgently required under the present circumstances, which are most obviously imperiling the children- - at one end by over-crowding and cold draughts, at the other end by stench and soilpollution, and in all parts by dampness of site and foul air within the house.

Drum Hill School-house enjoys one of the most charming views to be had in the region of the Hudson river. It stands on a high rocky elevation, far above the village. The number of pupils is about the same as in the other house, but their lot is a more agreeable one. It is of brick, two stories in height. A large addition is now making, inclusive

Floor-space

per scholar.

Cubic space

per scholar.

of a widening of the hall and staircases. The lower story in the older portion measures 63 feet 8 inches by 22 feet 8 inches within walls, and is divided telescope-wise into three rooms, containing 200 pupils. The freedom of circulation of air, due to the elevated site, and the comparatively open (non-compact) plan of the house, aid much in securing good ventilation, for which no sufficient provision is made in construction.

YONKERS CITY SCHOOLS.

In this city the two large and one of the three smaller houses were visited. School-house No. 2 is of brick with three stories and a cellar. The land is 100 feet above tide-water at the middle point of the school, and slopes so rapidly that there is an exit directly to the ground from each story. The space is ample; the soil rocky, in part covered with gravel. The main building contains 21 rooms, 925 sittings, 117,788 cubic feet of space in study-rooms, and a total average of 127 cubic feet per sit ting. The primary rooms, as usual, were the fullest, four such having about 9 square feet apiece of floor-space per sitting. An epidemic of measles had drawn off about 400 of the scholars, and the "annex" (two rooms in a neighboring wooden house) had been closed.

One primary room has about 3 3-4 square feet floor-space per head, viz.: 104 seats and 384 square feet floor (24x16). This room is dark, and when the school is at a normal standard, extremely crowded and close.

Six rooms besides the last named have defective light, the windowspace being from 1-8 to 1-9 the floor-space. There is no general attention to the principles of lighting. The house has no blinds, cloth roller shades being used in some south rooms. The desks are not ideal, but a graduation (three sizes to a room) is to be commended, and also a correct distancing of seats from desks. There is an abundance of places to drink and wash, and one room (20x40) with good light, warmth and cement floor for the girls to remain in and eat a noon-day lunch. The cellar is good and dry; it contains four furnaces. There are three jacketed furnaces and one base burner in the second story. The clothes are hung in the entries. The privies are in good order, no sewerage, simple cemented vaults, distance 35 feet from house. It is desirable to substitute some other arrangement.

The house has nine outlets, all by doors opening outwardly. Two short corridors run across the whole width; one long one nearly the whole length. The circulation of air is probably facilitated by this arrangement. In most of the rooms the atmosphere was fairly good. Windows were freely used, however, and doors and transoms were all open to corridors. The outside temperature was 37° F.

The ventilator register in the west rooms (four in each room each 8'x12') open into hollow walls and the air is presumed to discharge into the attic. From the latter three pipes, eight and one-half feet in circumference, open upwards into the open air. The current in many of the above registers was not good. The chief complaint in regard to ventilation in this house proceeded from certain rooms which are rather long and narrow (17'x27') with only two windows placed opposite the door so as to be most remote from it. In the rooms which had no flues this complaint was not heard; these rooms are surrounded on three

sides by corridors and the fourth side has four windows. The singing of the school in common and the teaching of music and reading deserve favorable mention.

very

The "Annex" consisting of two rooms in a wooden house near by of the dimensions of 38'x18' floor and 7 and 8" respectively in height. Cubic contents of first 5130; pupils (I primary) 50; seats of second, 5470; pupils (K primary) 90; seats, 94. The floor-space is accordingly 12.7 and 7.3 feet apiece, cubic space 95 and 57 feet apiece in the two rooms, respectively. The low ceilings, defective light, and absence of ventilation combine to make these rooms undesirable especially for such close crowding.

No. 6 registers 621 pupils in eighteen class-rooms. The site resembles that of No 2. In respect to size of rooms, floor-space per head of actual attendance, opening of windows and doors, size of ventilator flues and registers, No. 6 has a little the advantage or is not inferior to No. 2. The house is heated by six boilers (steam) the coils being placed in the cellar under the points where heated air is to be distributed to rooms. The air of the house was found generally inferior to that of No. 2. Perhaps the side of the corridors may be an important element in this result there being but one in No. 6 and that closed by double doors at each end.

In two crowded rooms formerly noted for poor air, a tin pipe open at floor and ceiling, heated by two Argand burners and carried far above the roof, seemed to act successfully. The comparative purity of the air was at once noticeable. It is said that the tube receives 900 cubic feet of air per minute from each room. The windows and doors were closed for twenty-five minutes without greatly increasing heat or close

ness.

The cellar is under-run by the house sewer which starts at the waterclosets situate at one end of the building in a porch. These closets and their surroundings are highly commendable. A little freer access

to the places under the seats and a little less wood work might be desirable; also some readier way of disposing of water used in swabbing down than that of pushing it out into the yard with a swab. As a change from the old arrangement of water-closets under the house the new is every way desirable.

The house is dry the cellar being properly under-drained.

The children's clothes are kept in named closets in the school-rooms as in the New York schools.

Union Free School No. 1 has one class-room and about fifty scholars. Above it is a similar room for public performances. It has a good roomy vestibule, a large library room, two good stairs, a model cellar with good hot-air furnace, cistern for drinking. The class-room is spacious and high and prettily decorated. Unfortunately it must be added that the site is low and in the centre of a malarious region though there is no dampness about the house and no cases of fever can be traced to its influence and also that the cost of erecting was $9,000.

The city has an ordinance passed in 1877-78, requiring every practicing physician and surgeon under penalty of fine to report to the Board of Health the cases of contagious diseases occurring in his practice. Much opposition was made to the passage of the law. The reported

cases, however, are not brought directly to the notice of the school authorities as they should be. Cases of such disease, and all children residing on the same floor with cases are alike excluded from school, until a certificate of fitness to return to school is given by the physician. The fact of vaccination is recorded on the school register.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NEW ROCHELLE VILLAGE.

At this place there is one large brick school-house with five hundred and fifty-one registered pupils, and two smaller schools of one room each, which present nothing of special interest.

The large school occupies a very beautiful site-two acres of land falling rather rapidly in the rear, embellished with fine trees, seats, and a flower garden. The premises seemed to be under the protection of the scholars.

The house is about twenty years old, and has faults in its plan. A newer portion has imitated the style of the older. It is somewhat crowded. There are eleven rooms, one for each grade, and one large assembly room. Of the class-rooms, one has twenty square feet of floorspace per pupil. The others have from 6.7 to thirteen, with an average actual attendance of forty-four to each room. The rooms are of the height of eleven and three quarters feet, and twelve feet. The light is deficient in some rooms, and badly distributed in others. There are four in which the windows are twenty-four feet from the opposite wall (and on one side only). The ratio of glass to floor-surface is onethirteenth, and they are justly complained of as dark-- two of them also as close.

There is no ventilation except by opening windows; in cold weather window boards are placed under the sash. The house is heated by three furnaces in the story which may be called either cellar or basement, a story which is uncovered by the slope of the land in the rear. The youngest class of children still occupies one room in this story; a subfloor space under this room is the source of supply of fresh air to a jacketed furnace which warms this room, and the two above it. No complaint of dampness was made. There are good sized play-rooms in this story; it is about eight and one-half feet high, and not wholly satisfactory as a plan for school work. One stair is very good, the other one (frequently used and liable to be used in an emergency), is only two feet wide, and has sharp turns; it can hardly be approved. The doors of exit from the house open outward and are sufficient.

Light gymnastics are confined to the primary grades, once a day in the higher, twice in the lower. The school is neatly kept and orderly. The drinking water is from pumps near the house, one hundred and forty feet from the privies, and in all probability uncontaminated. The privies are about forty, eighty and one hundred feet from the house. They are properly cleaned, but the vaults are offensive; one of them has not been cleaned out for three or four years. A board fence cuts the play-ground in two.

Respectfully submitted,

JAMES G. HUNT, M. D.,
Chairman of Committee.

NOTES AND CONCLUSIONS

UPON THE RESULTS OF THE INSPECTION OF SCHOOL-HOUSES UNDER THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS, AND UPON DR. LINCOLN'S REPORT ON THE PRINCIPLES

AND PRACTICE OF SCHOOL HYGIENE.

The results of personal inspection are found to harmonize quite generally with the replies which have been sent in by school district officers relating to the health questions submitted by this Board in circular No. 35. These results of the inquiry, by means of the circular to school officers, are yet incomplete. They will be studied advantageously at the expiration of another year; for over 11,400 school districts in the rural parts of the State are day by day making their returns upon the questions of that circular.*

The conclusions reached by the committee, and by Dr. Lincoln who labored with it for a period of three months, are briefly summarized as follows:

1. Structural improvements are being made in the school-houses in many districts; there is a recognized attention to some of the requirements of health that have been neglected in the old school-houses.

2. The committee has found only about one in fifteen of the common school-houses well outfitted for protecting the health of the pupils. Even in that one, there is oftener a neglect of sufficient ventilation than a suitable provision for it.

3. As a general fact, ventilation in the common school-houses is insufficient, and the means for it badly designed. When good, its excellence depends chiefly upon open windows and special facilities for controlling them.

4. Over-crowding is a prevailing fault, and even a wrong, in a majority of the school-houses which the committee and Dr. Lincoln have reported upon. The exceptions to this rule are noticeable in some of the diagrams printed in the report. In many of the schools the over-crowding is such as to endanger the health and life of the children, and taken in connection with defective ventilation, is a matter of momentous importance to the most loved and valued of lives in the families that send their children to the common schools.

*The preceding report by the Standing Committee on Public Institutions, presents notes and illustrations from that committee's inspections.