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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which the Hudson River palisades are 

 being mutihited, and tlie constant raids 

 upon our city parks for speedways, 

 parade grounds, etc. The great value 

 of a parliamentary or congressional com- 

 mittee of this sort lies in the fact that 

 its opinions are not only based upon ex- 

 pert knowledge, but that they can be 

 to an extent enforced; whereas such a 

 body of men with no olTicial position 

 may go on making suggestions and pro- 

 testing, as have numerous such bodies 

 for years, without producing any prac- 

 tical results. Tlie matter is, with us 

 perhaps, one of more importance to fu- 

 ture generations; but as all Nature 

 seems ordered primarily with reference 

 to the future welfare of the race, rather 

 than for the comfort of its present mem- 

 bers, the necessity for such an official 

 body, whose specific business shoidd be 

 to look after the preservation of objects 

 of historical interest to the succeeding 

 centuries, ought to be inculcated in us 

 as a part of the general evolutionary 

 scheme. 



Physical Measurements of Asy- 

 lum Children. — Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has 

 published an account of anthropological 

 investigations and measurements which 

 he has made upon one thousand white 

 and colored children in the New York 

 Juvenile Asylum and one hundred col- 

 ored children in the Colored Orphan Asy- 

 lum, for information about the physical 

 state of the children who are admitted 

 and kept in juvenile asylums, and par- 

 ticularly to learn whether there is any- 

 thing physically abnormal about them. 

 Some abnormality in the social or moral 

 condition of such children being as- 

 sumed, if they are also physically in- 

 ferior to other children, they would have 

 to be considered generally handicapped 

 in the struggle for life; but if tliey do 

 not differ greatly in strength and con- 

 stitution from the average ordinary chil- 

 dren, then their state would be much 

 more hopeful. Among general facts con- 

 cerning the condition of the children 

 in the Juvenile Asylum, Dr. Hrdlicka 

 learned that when admitted to the insti- 

 tution they are almost always in some 

 way morally and physically inferior to 

 healthy children from good social classes 

 at large— ^the result, usually, of neglect 

 or improper nutrition or both. Within a 

 month, or even a week, decided changes 



for the better are observed, and after 

 their admission the individuals of the 

 same sex and age seem gradually, while 

 preserving the fundamental differences 

 of their nature, to show less of their 

 former diversity and grow more alike. 

 In learning, the newcomers are more or 

 less retarded when put into the school, 

 but in a great majority of cases they 

 begin to acquire rapidly, and the child 

 usually reaches the average standing of 

 the class. Inveterate backwardness in 

 learning is rare. Phjsically, about one 

 seventh of all the inmates of the asylum 

 were without a blemish on their bodies — 

 a proportion which will not seem small 

 to persons well versed in analyses of the 

 kind. The differences in the physical 

 standing of the boys and the girls were 

 not so great or so general as to permit 

 building a hypothesis upon them, though 

 the girls came out a little the better. 

 The colored boys seemed to be physically 

 somewhat inferior to the white ones, but 

 the number of them waa not large 

 enough to justify a conclusion. Of the 

 children not found perfect, two hundred 

 presented only a single abnormality, and 

 this usually so small as hardly to jus- 

 tify excluding them from the class of 

 perfect. Regarding as decidedly abnor- 

 mal only those in whom one half the 

 parts of the body showed defects, the 

 number was eighty-seven. " Should we, 

 for the sake of illustration, express the 

 physical condition of the children by 

 such terms as fine, medium, and bad, 

 the fine and bad would emlirace in all 

 192 individuals, while 808 would remain 

 as medium." All the classes of abnor- 

 malities — congenital, pathological, and 

 acquired — seemed more numerous in the 

 boys than in the girls. The colored chil- 

 dren showed fewer inborn abnormalities 

 than the white, but more pathological 

 and acquired. No child was found who 

 could be termed a thorough physical de- 

 generate, and the author concludes that 

 the majority of the class of children 

 dealt with are physically fairly average 

 individuals. 



Busy Birds. — A close observation of 

 a day's work of busy activity, of a day's 

 work of the chipping sparrow hunting 

 and catching insects to feed its yoimg, 

 is recorded by Clarence M. Weed in a 

 Bulletin of the New Hampshire College 

 Agricultural Experiment Station. Mr. 



