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PRESENT STATUS OF GOVERNMENT EDUCATION 267of Agriculture and Commerce has proposed to the StateDepartment that a 1mining college should be opened in theThree Eastern Provinces, an agricultural and a forestrycollege in Peking, a fishery school in Hupeh, and anengineering college in Shanghai. Working in conjunctionwith the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, theMinistry of Education recently sent despatches to theprovinces, requesting the officials to set aside some publiclands for use of forestry. When such lands are secured,instructions are to be issued to the schools to observe anarbour day. The Minister of Education sent orders to thespecial (industrial, technical, commercial, etc.) schools ofthe whole country to send samples of their work to Pekingfor an exhibit. Under orders from the Minister ofEducation, the Society for the Investigation of Educationin Inner and Outer Mongolia has decided to open a normalschool at Kalgan and primary schools in the districts, toreserve public lands in each district for education, to askthe Chamber of Commerce of Kalgan to open commercialschools, to send men speaking the Chinese and Mongolianlanguages to go from place to place to encourage education,to issue textbooks in Chinese and Mongolian, and to ask theCommercial Press to open a branch office in Kalgan, withagencies at Jehol and Suiyuan.Thus we see that education is makingnoticeable progress in this country. A comparison of the two sets of figures given understatistics shows an increase of one-sixth in the number ofschools and students, also in the amount of money spent foreducation in favour of the latest figures. If we compare theselatest figures with those for the tirst year of Hsuan Tung,we find that the number of schools and students has beendoubled in five years, while the amount of school expenditurehas decreased by seven per cent. The progress is notphenomenal, but is a steady growth. The work of theCommercial Press may be taken as an index of the educational condition of the country. The past year was a busyone for this company, so much so that nearly all itsdepartments had to do night work. It is to be hoped thatthe schools will not be affected by the present civil strife.