828 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



dividuals. The camera is doubtless useful to beginners, and 

 helps them to avoid great errors ; but the artist has nothing to do 

 with it ; he takes his inspiration from Nature, and his canon will 

 vary according to the subject he treats. A slender and nimble 

 runner will not have the proportions of an athlete. Further- 

 more, the artist will put something of his own into his subject, 

 exaggerating, usually without thinking of it, some features that 

 have impressed him, and ignoring others. 



Such departure from truth is not necessarily wrong. Exag- 

 geration, like all our tendencies, may have a good or a bad result, 

 according to the use that is made of it. We reprehend it when it 

 develops unpleasant traits into undue prominence, or when it im- 

 prisons us in inconvenient and unseemly garments. But when 

 it emphasizes among the traits of our countenance those which 

 are associated with intelligence, bringing out the forehead which 

 thinks, augmenting the facial reliefs upon which emotion is ex- 

 pressed, and retiring the merely physical features, it offers an 

 attractive ideal and one that should not be despised. 



We are not wrong when we admire the beauty of those among 

 us in whom the characteristics of our race are exaggerated. They 

 possess in the highest degree those features which are in course 

 of development, they represent the generations of the future, and 

 are worthy, by this title, to be perpetuated. Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



ENRICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. 



Bt HELEN ZIMMEEN. 



SECOND PAPER. 



FERRI passes in review 1,711 individuals, of whom 711 are 

 soldiers, 699 criminals, and 301 madmen. In this minute 

 examination of anthropometric data he discusses almost every 

 case, pointing out its specific characteristics by means of ample 

 comparisons, which justify his methods of research and his con- 

 clusions, as well as throw light on the difficult and not yet firmly 

 established study of criminal anthropology. To close this section 

 of his learned work, he devotes a portion to the reaffirmation of 

 the inferiority of criminal as compared with normal man, and to 

 the analogy that certain anomalies and delinquent characteristics 

 present, deducing thence criminal degeneracy. Very remarkable 

 are the differences of cephalometric characteristics between a cer- 

 tain number of soldiers examined, among whom were some stu- 

 dents. The superiority of the latter was incontestably proved by 

 the great anterior semicircumference of the head, by the greater 



