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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and among the mountain valleys of the Him- 

 alayas and the Hindu Kush. Each differ- 

 ent type of country produced its own peculiar 

 impression upon me, find has enabled me to 

 appreciate perhaps more keenly than I other- 

 wise should have done its particular influence 

 upon the inhabitants. The forest produces 

 a feeling of indefinable repression ; one seems 

 so hedged in and hampered about, and longs 

 to be free of the endless succession of trunks 

 of trees, and to be able to see clear space in 

 front. Far preferable, in my opinion, is the 

 desolation of the desert, which, depressing as 

 it may be, in some way produces also a feel- 

 ing of freedom ; and on the open steppes an 

 irresistible desire to roam and wander seems 

 to come over one, which I can well under- 

 stand was the motive power which caused 

 the Mongol hordes under Genghis Khan to 

 overrun the rest of Asia, and part even of 

 Europe. Again, with these Mongols of the 

 desert and the steppes a stranger is always 

 hospitably received, and there is little of that 

 dread of people from the outside so frequent- 

 ly met with among barbarous nations. The 

 Kirghiz of the open Pamirs, too, have some 

 of these characteristics. But directly one 

 enters the narrow, shut-in valleys, such as are 

 found on the southern slopes of the Hindu 

 Kush and the Himalayas, one finds the ideas 

 of the people shut in too. They have a dread 

 of strangers; they desire, above all things, 

 to be left to themselves, and unless forced 

 by over-population to do so, or led away by 

 the ambitions of a chief, seldom leave the 

 particular valley to which they belong." 



Ratios of Illegitimacy. A table of sta- 

 tistics of illegitimacy in Europe, published by 

 Dr. Albert Leffingwell, shows the Irish to be 

 the most virtuous of all the peoples, the ratio 

 of illegitimate births among them being 

 twenty-six in every thousand. The English 

 rate is forty-eight, and the Scotch eighty-two 

 per thousand. Thus we may roughly say 

 that for every child born out of wedlock in 

 Ireland two are born in England and three 

 in Scotland. In Europe at large, Ireland is 

 closely followed in its place of honor by Rus- 

 sia, with the low rate of twenty-eight per 

 thousand, and by Holland with the rate of 

 thirty-two per thousand. The Italian and 

 French rates are respectively seventy-four and 

 eighty-two per thousand, comparable with 



the rate in Scotland. Among the countries 

 that show the highest proportions of illegiti- 

 macy are Sweden, Saxony, Bavaria, and Aus- 

 tria, in which the rates range from one hun- 

 dred to one hundred and forty per thou- 

 sand. Austria is at the opposite pole from 

 Ireland, and takes the lowest place in moral- 

 ity among the European nations, with a rate 

 of one hundred and forty-six per thou- 

 sand. The inquiry into the causes of these 

 varying rates of illegitimacy raises compli- 

 cated and interesting problems. The causes 

 generally supposed to be principal factors in 

 the matter are poverty, ignorance, and the 

 contamination of great cities. Examining 

 the influence of these, Dr. Leffingwell finds 

 it very slight. In Ireland, the lowest rates 

 are in the poorest counties. Russia, with 

 one of the lowest rates, is one of the poor- 

 est countries ; and the author affirms that 

 " there is nowhere such uniform relation be- 

 tween the indigence of a people and the preva- 

 lence of illegitimacy as to justify the hypothe- 

 sis that this phase of moral delinquency in 

 any district or country can be accurately de- 

 scribed as caused by its poverty. As little 

 can the influence of great cities account for 

 the prevalence of illegitimacy. Education 

 and creed appear to have little influence. We 

 must seek the real factors in race and hered- 

 ity, legislative restraints upon marriage, so- 

 cial usage, and other like circumstances." 



Value of the Applications of Anthropol- 

 ogy. In a paper on Anthropology as a Sci- 

 ence and as a Branch of University Educa- 

 tion, Dr. D. G. Brinton thus estimates the 

 value of the applications of this science : " In 

 government and law, in education and reli- 

 gion, men have hitherto been dealt with ac- 

 cording to traditional beliefs or a priori theo- 

 ries of what they may or ought to be. When 

 we learn through scientific research what 

 they really are, we shall then, and then only, 

 have a solid foundation on which to build the 

 social, ethical, and political structures of the 

 future. It is the appreciation of this which 

 has given the extraordinary impetus to the 

 study of sociology a branch of anthropology 

 within the last decade. Anthropology 

 alone furnishes the key and clew to history. 

 This also is meeting recognition. No longer 

 are the best histories mainly chronicles of 

 kings and wars, but records of the develop- 



