646 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. X2XVI. No. 932 



Steensteup, J. J. S. 



1856. Hectocotyldannelson hos Oetopodslaeg- 

 terne Argonauta og Tremoctopus oplyst 

 ved lagttagelse af lignende Dannelser hos 

 Blaeksprutterne i Almindelighed. Vi- 

 densh. Selsk. Skr. (5), Vol. 4, pp. 185- 

 216, Pis. 1-2. 



1861. Overblik over de i Kjobenhavna Museer 

 opbevarede Blaeksprutter fra det aabne 

 Hav (1860-61). Overs. Vid. Selslc. Forh., 

 pp. 69-86. 



1882. En ny Blaeksprutteslaegt ; Tracheloteu- 

 this. Vid. Medd. Naturh. Foren. Kjoben- 

 ham (4), Vol. 3, pp. 293-294. 

 Veeeill, a. E. 



1881. The Cephalopods of the Northeastern 

 Coast of America. Part II. The Smaller 

 Cephalopods, including the Squids and the 

 Octopi, with Other Allied Forms. Trans. 

 Conn. Acad. Sci., Vol. 5, pp. 259-446, Pis. 

 26-56, June, 1880-Deeember, 1881. 



1885. Third Catalogue of Mollusca, Recently 

 Added to the Fauna of the New England 

 Coast, etc. Trans. Conn. Acad. Sci., Vol. 

 6, pp. 395-452, Pis. 42^4, April-June, 

 1885. 



S. S. Berry 



Stanford Univeesitt 



inals therefrom, since the police tests are applied 

 only to those who have broken the law and many 

 are non-criminal simply from lack of occasion. 

 Also, we are learning that many cases of apparent 

 eriminality are only cases of mental defect or 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



THE ANTHROPOLOeiCAL SOCIETY OP "WASHINGTON 



The 462d regular meeting of the Anthropolog- 

 ical Society of Washington, D. C, was held in the 

 New Museum Building, Washington, on October 

 15, 1912. 



Major Sylvester, superintendent of police for 

 the District of Columbia, read a very interesting 

 practical paper concerning criminal characteristics. 

 It began with a brief review of the history of 

 crime and the succession of different kinds of 

 crimes prevalent at different periods, beginning 

 with the cruder, such as homicide and tending 

 toward the subtler, so that quite recently the green 

 goods man has become less conspicuous than the 

 forger and embezzler. The general government, 

 it continued, has been urged to establish a national 

 bureau of criminal identification, but such coop- 

 erative work has been left to the heads of Amer- 

 ican police departments. 



It pointed out the practical difficulties of estab- 

 lishing a standard of the normal human being, 

 and the imperfection of our distinction of crim- 



The popular impression of the criminal as a 

 hungry, shifty individual is erroneous. The average 

 man who makes crime a business in large cities is 

 a fairly prosperous individual, with no fear of 

 arrest. Some of the anatomical characteristics 

 which Lombroso thought decisive of criminality 

 are common in the lower races of man, whether 

 criminal or not. Measurements in general would 

 give racial characteristics rather than criminal. 



A number of criminals charged with murder 

 were compared in detail, with the result of show- 

 ing many varieties of human appearance bracketed 

 together. 



Some special kinds of crime call for peculiari- 

 ties of appearance and develop them, but with 

 these exceptions the criminal does not usually have 

 a different aspect from that of other people, though 

 both criminal and non-criminal of the police classi- 

 fication differ among themselves. Stress was laid 

 on conditions as largely determining the category 

 to which a man would belong. 



The paper was discussed by Drs. Hrdlifika, 

 Frank Baker, Hough, Glueck and others. The 

 former two gentlemen chiefly emphasized the un- 

 reliability of external peculiarities relied on by 

 Lombroso and of every sort of test which 

 has been devised for general distinctions. Dr. 

 Hrdlieka insisted that crime is a matter of the 

 nerves and brain or the mentality and criminal 

 characteristics may be more due to organs and 

 parts which are hidden than to the obvious and 

 chiefly irrelevant external ones which Lombroso 

 depended upon for his diagnosis. Dr. Hough 

 chiefly explained tattooing as devoid of signifi- 

 cance in primitive conditions, but in civilization 

 a survival ordinarily indicating some weakness 

 which might predispose to crime. Dr. Glueck 

 stated his practical experience in charge of the 

 criminal branch of the Government Hospital for 

 the Insane and the necessity which was felt of 

 learning all about a man's past and coniditions 

 and his behavior at every stage of his life rather 

 than trusting to his behavior or condition at the 

 time of any one act as a proof of criminality. 



Major Sylvester condemned the evil influence 

 of politics in preventing the police of some large 

 cities from bringing criminals to justice. 



