SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 273 



criminals, criminals by contracted habits, occasional criminals, and crim- 

 inals by passion. Those in the last three classes he deems largely the 

 victims of cu'cumstances. He looks to criminal statistics for consid- 

 erable light on the sociological side of criminality, and finds as the 

 most conspicuous general phenomenon that they exhibit '' the steadiness 

 of the gravest forms of crime side by side with the continuous increase 

 of slighter offenses." At the same time there are yearly fluctuations in 

 the several kinds of offenses corresponding to seasons of great or small 

 harvests, excessive heat or cold, political or commercial disturbance, 

 etc. On this con*espondence of the amount of criminality to the environ- 

 ment Prof. Ferri bases his " law of criminal saturation," which contradicts 

 Quetelet's dictum as to a regular budget of crime. From this law it follows 

 that the penalties hitherto regarded as the best remedies for crime can not 

 be effectual. Our author, therefore, recommends what may be called 

 " penal substitutes," the aim of which would be to reduce the factors of 

 crime. As ways in which society can be protected indirectly from aggres- 

 sion he instances such devices as the shifting of taxes which tempt to 

 fraud, the adaptation of governments to the people they control, scientific 

 means for the detection of crime, wise legislation in regard to marriage 

 and inheritance, scientific education, and the abolition of unwholesome 

 amusements. The latter half of the volume is of most popular interest, as 

 it is devoted to practical reforms. Among the changes that Prof. Ferri 

 advocates are the general use of the Scotch verdict of "Not proven" incases 

 where neither guilt nor innocence is established, indemnification for judicial 

 errors, the direction of criminal trials, not to appraising the culpability of 

 the prisoner for a particular act, but to ascertaining to what type of crimi- 

 nals he belongs, the abolition of the jury, except in the trial of crimes of the 

 political and social order, the employment of various grades of segregation 

 of the criminal with indeterminate sentences, the commitment of insane 

 criminals to asylums, add the abolition of the death penalty. Many other 

 allied topics are discussed incidentally. The above constitutes what Ferri 

 regards as a defensive system of criminal administration which society 

 should substitute for its present punitive system. 



We have had a life of Agassiz as a man, we now have him placed be- 

 fore us both as a man and a scientist by one of his scientific associates aiid 

 fellow-countrymen.* In telling the story of Agassiz's life Prof. Marcou 

 has made use of materials collected from many sources, including much 

 obtained from Agassiz's European friends and associates. All of Agassiz's 

 letters that he inserts, some twenty-five or thirty, were written in Fi'ench 

 and stand in the original language. So also do Agassiz's presidential ad- 

 dress on the ice age, delivered before the Helvetic Society, which fills nine- 

 teen pages of small type, and the six pages of extracts from De Charpentier's 

 first paper on erratic bowlders, the author believing that all these docu- 

 ments would suffer too much by translation. Our author is not one of 

 those who write eulogy and call it biography. He lets both the well 

 rounded and the less rounded sides of his subject's character be seen. 

 While not depicting him as a demigod, Prof. Marcou has credited Agassiz 

 with talents sufficient to accomplish the labors on which his fame rests. 



* Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz. By Jules Marcou. Two Volumes, 12mo. New 

 York and London: Macmillan & Co. Price, $4. 

 vou XLix. — 23 



