then he has been following up this clew, and now believes that "the only commercial way to make graphite is by breaking up a carbide by the action of heat." A building for its manufacture in this way, by the use of the electric furnace, is now in course of erection at Niagara Falls. =Commercial Education in England.=[55]--It is only of comparatively late years that the Government has had anything to do with the education of the people. For some centuries back all English education was practically controlled by our two ancient universities--Oxford and Cambridge. They decided what subjects were to be taught, and how they were to be taught. The control they exercised over our English schools was an indirect one, but it was none the less effectual. The schools themselves were, like the universities, independent of Government, or, indeed, of any control. The principal of these are known as "public schools," though the term "public" has of late years also been applied to the public elementary schools. These are nearly all developments of ancient foundations. Winchester, founded in the fourteenth century, and Westminster, in the sixteenth, grew up under the shadows of great religious houses; Eton was established in the fifteenth century by the monarch, close to his own palace at Windsor; Harrow, which dates from the sixteenth century, is the most important example of the most numerous class of all privately founded local schools--grammar schools, as they were generally entitled--which have developed beyond their original founders' intention, and have eventually come to attract boys from all parts of the kingdom. The best boys from all of them went to the universities, and the course of study which was most successful at the university was naturally the course of study which was preferred at the school. The _literæ humaniores_, which were the sum total of university education, included only Greek and Latin language and literature, mathematics, and logic. Science--I have now in my mind the education of but a single generation back--was ignored. The teaching of modern languages was perfunctory in the extreme; the same may be said of history and geography, while even English language and literature were almost entirely neglected. Now an education modeled on these lines was not ill suited for professional men--men who went from the university into law, the Church, or medicine. But it was by no means suited, especially when cut short in its early stages, for boys whose future destination was the counting-house or the shop. We are not met to consider the training of scholars, but the sort of education best adapted to the requirements of the ordinary man of business, and given under the limitations inevitable in the conditions of the case--that is to say, in a very limited period and during the early years of life--intended also not only to train the mind but to provide a means of earning a living. Commercial education must in fact