School Architecture. By E. R. Robson. (_Murray.)—Mr. Robson describes his
book as being "Practical Remarks on the Planning, Designing, Building, and Furnishing of School-houses." It contains the results of the experience and observation of several years, both here and abroad, and it is copiously illustrated with drawings that repre- sent school buildings and apparatus, down to the smallest details, as they exist in the principal countries of the Continent, in America, and there. The book is an admirably complete manual of its subject, which, were we concerned in any way with school-building, we should make a point of consulting, or rather studying. Nor is it only in building schools that the advice and information of the volume may be utilised with the greatest advantage. In most cases, of course, schools are built already, and have to be taken and made the best of. Here, then, the -chapters on "Warming and Ventilation," and on "School Furniture and Apparatus" (the latter being from the pen of Mr. W. Moss, Clerk to the Sheffield School Board), will be profitably studied. " Warming" is a most difficult problem,—one very seldom so solved as to combine comfort and health. It is amazing, indeed, what children can stand in this way. Merchant Taylors' School, for instance, had no fires at all till within the memory of men still living. But that children's powers of learn- ing are hindered by unfavourable outward conditions no one who has had any experience, or indeed who has any common-sense, can doubt. Mr. Robson is in favour of the open fire (arranged, of course, so as to throw the heat into the room, and not, as builders seek to do, into the chimney), when the numbers are not above 500. For larger numbers, artificial warming is made absolutely necessary by the consideration of cost alone. He seems inclined to the hot-water system." Ventilation is, if possible, a still more difficult question. We must refer our readers to Mr. Robson's excellent remarks, though we cannot help recording our own impression that more harm is done by air too cold than by warm air only moderately impure.
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