number awarded to exhibitors of the United States; and of these, 27 were gold medals, three of which were awarded to the Bureau of Education. The Commissioner reports that the Government of France has established in the ministry of public instruction a bureau similar in its objects to the United States Bureau of Education, and that the federal government of Switzerland proposes to do the same.
The pleasant intercourse of the office with foreign educators continues. Many important letters have been received and answered. Forty-five foreign periodicals are examined regularly, and important works and reports on education in all the languages of Western Europe are procured as soon as possible, are carefully read, and the most valuable parts are translated or summarized.
Officers in charge of school systems and schools in the regions lately afflicted by the yellow fever report that it has been impossible to give instruction up to the present time; that the orphan asylums are over-crowded, and that there are many destitute children left parentless by the fever, for whom no provision has been made as yet. Correspondence has been had through the office with a view to a partial relief by their reception into institutions for destitute children in other parts of the country which may be so situated as to be able to receive them.
The Commissioner urgently renews his recommendation that appropriations be made sufficient to do the work of the office with reasonable facility, and that Congress devise some plan for the aid of education throughout the country.
CENSUS.
The near approach of the tenth census renders it important that the question of a new census law should be considered by Congress at its next session. If the additional legislation which seems to be required to secure statistical results commensurate with the expense of enumeration be put over to the first regular session of the Forty-sixth Congress, it must suffer from inadequate consideration and hasty action, while the postponement of the initial preparations to so late a date will inevitably enhance the cost of the census and impair the value of the returns.
A work of such extent and complexity, the administrative machinery of which has to be built up for the occasion wholly from the ground, whose agents, or the greater part of them, can, from the nature of the case, have had no experience of such duties, should be carefully planned; every arrangement should be made considerately; every appointment should be thoroughly canvassed; every spot where exceptional liability to failure or error exists should be known and covered by special provisions; and the central statistical office should stand organized and ready to take up the returns as fast as they come in, to sift and sort them with intelligence and without delay, and to digest, compile, and publish them in the briefest time compatible with accuracy. All this can be fully and satisfactorily done only in case
