Mrs. Humphry Ward has given a most interesting account of an experiment in a “Special School for Defectives” at Tavistock Place, London, the pioneer school of its kind in London. That it is a special school for physically defective children does not detract from the importance of the results noted. For some time there had been an arrangement whereby the children were provided with a midday meal for which their parents were charged three cents a day, the deficit being met by the managers from the school fund. Complaint was made by some of the visitors interested in the experiment that the meals were not good enough, not sufficiently nourishing for children of that class, and the managers were prevailed upon to improve the dietary to a considerable extent. Mrs. Ward says: “The experiment of a more liberal and varied diet was tried. More hot meat, more eggs, milk, cream, vegetables, and fruit were given. In consequence the children’s appetites largely increased, and the expense naturally increased with them. The children’s pence in May amounted to £3 13_s._ 6_d._ ($17.64), and the cost of the food was £4 7_s._ 2_d._ ($20.92); in June, after the more liberal scale had been adopted, the children’s payments were still £3 13_s._ 10_d._ ($17.72), but the expenses had risen to £5 7_s._ 8_d._ ($25.84). Meanwhile the physical and mental results of the increased expenditure are already unmistakable. Partially paralyzed children have been recovering strength in hands and limbs with greater rapidity than before.... The effect, indeed, is startling to those who have watched the experiment. Meanwhile, the teachers have entered in the log-book of the school their testimony to the increased power of work that the children have been showing since the new feeding has been adopted. Hardly any child now wants to lie down during school time, whereas applications to lie down used to be common; and the children _both learn and remember better_.”[77]