Report of the United States.

The report of Mr. William Mather to your commissioners on his six months' tour throughout the United States of America and Canada for the purpose of studying the schools and factories of I hat continent deserves the most careful perusal. It will be seen that Mr. Mather assigns greater influence on American manufactures to the general education of the American people derived from their common schools than to their technical schools, the importance of which latter, however, in the training of civil engineers has been experienced for some years, though it has only more recently become recognized by those who are engaged in mechanical engineering and in metallurgical and manufacturing establishments of various kinds. This recognition is, however, now becoming universal. A decided preference is being given in the United States for the positions of managers and heads of departments to persons who have received a scientific training in a technical school, and the plan is followed in these schools of combining instruction in "application" with instruction in pure science. Although the conditions of American industry-differ in many respects from our own, there can be no doubt that we may derive great advantage from a careful study of what is being done in the way of technical instruction in the United States, as, together with the elementary education of Canada, it is so graphically described by Mr. Mather. We may add that the accuracy of his statements and conclusions is generally confirmed by the accounts of technical instruction in America which we have received from other competent judges.