176 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



many of them are blond, and their average stature is fully 

 up to or over the standard of ordinary deserters, and of 

 course very much over that of ordinary criminals. Apparently 

 the men who give the prevailing character to this class are 

 drunkards, unstable, untrustworthy, insubordinate, have in 

 fact the vices of the sanguine temperament, while the 

 typical violent criminal, with his dark complexion, is 

 choleric or melancholic, and the typical perpetrators of 

 sexual offences are choleric or sanguine. 



Criminal anthropologists as a rule assign great impor- 

 tance to one or other of two hypotheses, that of atavism 

 and that of decreneration. Lombroso mia"ht derive some 

 support from my facts for the former belief Mr. Mac Ritchie, 

 who thinks he has proved the historical existence and 

 numerical importance, in earlier days, of whole tribes of 

 outlaws of gipsy type, might deduce some of my criminals 

 from them. Something of the sort may apply to the 

 criminals of violence, to enough of them, that is, to give 

 the apparent colour to the whole mass. But the ordinary 

 criminal, so far as he is not the product of contemporary 

 surroundings, looks more like a product of degeneration. 

 The mean stature is conspicuously low both in my ordinary 

 malefactors, and in the Australian fugitives. As to the 

 kephalic development I have unfortunately no data, and it is 

 probable that in this country at least it is less characteristic 

 than the facial physiognomy, of which Mr. Galton has 

 given us some very striking composite photographs. 

 Meanwhile, we must wait to see what Dr. Garson's in- 

 vestigations meiy lead to. What is most required, and 

 what most criminal anthropologists have somewhat 

 neglected, is to ascertain the ordinary physical standard 

 of the classes whence criminals arise, and thus to obtain a 

 basis of comparison. 



The effect of what De Lapouge styles "legal selection," 

 that is, the temporary or permanent incapacitation of the 

 criminal to propagate his kind, is at present very small. 

 During many years, and indeed many generations, attempts 

 were made to eliminate the criminal type from the British 

 Isles, at the risk of its propagating itself with augmented 



