220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



perfected in gentleness, grace, and pleasing manners, and with- 

 drew from those qualities that required strength and cruelty. 

 Other influences, not least among which is the longer duration of 

 maternity, cause civilized women to become more compassionate ; 

 but in every woman there is an undercurrent of cruelty, which 

 appears either when her nature is wicked or when her strongest 

 feelings, such as those of mother or wife, are attacked. Hence 

 Lombroso adduces that woman's attitude with regard to cruelty 

 and pity is a contradictory one, which will by evolution give way 

 in favor of gentleness and mercy. In the second part of his 

 work Lombroso compares the crimes of female animals with the 

 crimes of primitive and savage women ; and in the third chapter 

 he gives a brief history of prostitution, which he considers as one 

 of the great factors in the promotion of crime. Under the head- 

 ing, "Crimes of Primitive Women," the writer discusses adul- 

 tery, abortion, infanticide, witchcraft, and poisoning, and con- 

 cludes thus: "In general, women savages, like other women, 

 commit fewer crimes than men, although their nature is rather 

 worse than better ; and the crimes for which they are punished 

 are in great part conventional, such as those contained in tabu 

 and witchcraft. What corresponds to crime among men is for 

 savage women prostitution." 



In the Pathological and Anthropometrical Anatomy of Female 

 Criminals and Prostitutes, which forms the third part of the book, 

 all the measurements which serve to establish those irregulari- 

 ties from which the criminal school draws its conclusions have 

 been taken with the greatest care. According to Lombroso, they 

 are for women the following : Height, the length of the arms 

 when opened, and the length of the limbs are inferior in crimi- 

 nals weight being, in relation to their stature, greater in prosti- 

 tutes and assassins than in ordinary women. The hands are lon- 

 ger and more developed in prostitutes, the foot shorter, the fin- 

 gers less developed than the rest of the hand. The size and cir- 

 cumference of the skull in female thieves, and even more so in 

 prostitutes, are small; vice versa, the facial diameter and espe- 

 cially the jaw are more developed than in normal specimens. The 

 hair and iris are apt to be darker in criminals, and up to a cer- 

 tain point in prostitutes, in whom, however, fair and red hair are 

 often lighter or darker than the normal color. White hair, which 

 is rare in ordinary women, is twice as frequent in criminals ; vice 

 versa, with them baldness is rarer during youth and middle age 

 than among ordinary women, while wrinkles are more frequent 

 only when they are middle-aged. It has been difficult to gather 

 these facts with certainty about prostitutes, who are nearly all 

 painted and made up even when quite young ; but from the data 

 Lombroso had to go upon, precocious white hair and baldness 



