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"CHAPTER XXIV.SPECIAL PHILANTHROPY.The Blind.SJ /jiYORK among the blind in China can still only bevA^v described as in its initial stages, for though one ortwo of the existing institutions can show a recordof more than twenty years work, the total number ofsuch institutions is so small in relation to the vast areasin which they are situated, and the number of blindpersons who have thus far been reached and taughtisas nothing compared with the thousands who duringin the last twenty years have endured misery the evilsof spiritual and physical darkness.The systems in use may be classified under twoheads.A. 7he system invented by W. PI. Murray, of Peking,which, reckoning the Chinese sounds as numbering fourhundred and eight, has provided a number for each ofthose sounds. In this system the books are thereforewritten in embossed dots which represent the numbersof the sounds which follow each other in the lines ofwhatever book is being transcribed. Thus 127, 34,58, 113, 253, 290 represents in Chinese ren dj chu,hsing ben shan." On this system it is not necessaryto dwell at length, as probably every reader of the YearBook has seen Miss Gordon Cumming s book, "TheInventor of the Numeral Type for China." In that bookeverything that can be said in favor of this system issaid by a practised writer, its one defect being that itgives no credit to anyone else for any work for theblind and leaves the impression that all the Mandarinspeakingblind are dependent on this one system forinstruction.