nearest analogue in that of Montauk Point. "In fact, if we could imagine Montauk Point to be despoiled of its few remaining trees and converted into an island it would bear a striking resemblance, geologically and botanically, to Block Island." Considering the geological features of Long Island, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, and comparing their floras, we find that all except Block Island have some of the plain region remaining with them, on which a characteristic flora finds a home. Block Island has lost all its plain region and accompanying flora, and is now merely an isolated portion of the terminal moraine, with small areas of modern sand beach and dune formations, affording a home only for such species as can exist under such conditions. The island appears to have been extensively wooded before it was settled, and large stumps, together with roots and branches, are found in some of the peat bogs. The scarcity of animal life on the island is sure at once to attract the attention of the observer from the mainland. Tree-living birds are absent, but robins, bank swallows, red-winged blackbirds, and meadow larks occur with some frequency. Among mollusks, the periwinkle of the Old World, an importation or migration, is the most abundant. Frogs and spotted turtles are plentiful, and a few small striped snakes were seen by Mr. Hollick. The archæology of the island is being studied by persons specially interested in the subject. =The Claims of the High School.=--In considering the right of the public high school to be a just charge upon the public treasury, Mr. Frank A. Hill, of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, finds that less than one fifth of the school money raised in the State is expended on account of these schools, whereas if the number of pupils in each of the thirteen grades of school was equal and the money was evenly divided, the higher grades would be entitled to four thirteenths, or nearly one third of it. To an objection sometimes raised against the high-school system that the "toiling millions" will have no use for more than the teaching of the elementary grades, Mr. Hill asks, Who has a right to decide whether one child shall have a greater or less amount of instruction than another? "And so freedom of choice, when the question of what one's life work shall be comes up, is a basic thing in government by the people. Upon the wisdom of this choice turns the welfare of each unit in the State, and therefore of the State itself." Hence the State has no right to refuse to one any opportunity of preparing himself to exercise this freedom of choice which it accords to another. There has never been a time since 1647 when the laws of Massachusetts did not require certain towns to maintain grammar schools, of which the high schools are the modern equivalents, at public expense, and when the colony became a State a perpetual obligation was imposed upon the Legislature and magistrates