JULY 7, 1899. ] 
MEASUREMENTS OF ASYLUM CHILDREN. 
Dr. ALES HRDLICKA has recently published a 
paper containing a series of very interesting 
‘ Anthropological Investigations on One Thous- 
and White and Colored Children of Both 
Sexes,’ inmates of the New York Juvenile 
Asylum. The principal aim of these investiga- 
tions was to learn as much as possible about 
the physical state of the children who are being 
admitted and kept in juvenile asylums, while 
it was also intended to add to our knowledge 
of the normal child and of several classes of 
abnormal children. It is well known that a 
large proportion of the children admitted to 
juvenile asylums are sent there on account of 
the poverty of their parents, while another large 
contingent are committed as incorrigible or 
even criminal. As both these classes are, from 
a sociological point of view, abnormal, it is im- 
portant to learn how far their physical charac- 
teristics conform to their moral character, in 
order to justly decide whether or not they are 
materially handicapped in their struggle for 
life, since their treatment and prospects would 
depend largely on the answers to this question. 
Dr. Hrdlicka’s observations and measurements 
have a direct bearing on this point, while they 
are also of value to the anthropologist and 
zoologist. 
While the asylum children are of somewhat 
smaller stature and smaller weight than were 
the outside children available for comparison, 
these deficiencies are probably due to lack of 
nutrition caused by poverty ; measurements of 
the heads show no great departure from what 
is considered normal. Criminal and vicious 
children are not, as a class, characterized by 
any considerable physical inferiority, while the 
mental ability of at least 85 per cent. was equal 
to the average ability of children outside the in- 
stitution. Dr. Hrdlicka, therefore, concluded 
that this class of children make a favorable 
showing and, with proper treatment, give great 
hopes as to their future. It is considered of 
great importance that such children should re- 
main sufficiently long in the asylum to enable 
them to acquire and retain good habits. 
It is found, while the variety of abnor- 
malities existing among the inmates of the 
asylum is very great, that there is no one ab- 
SCIENCE. 
29 
normality nor set of abnormalities character- 
istic of the children as a class, and that the 
characters are usually so slight as not to inter- 
fere with any progress the children might other- 
wise be capable of. 
The fact that certain pretty constant differ- 
ences exist between the colored and white chil- 
dren is of considerable interest, the more that, 
zoologically speaking, these differences are such 
as to indicate that the negro is more generalized 
than the white. Thus the negro children ex- 
hibit more uniformity in their physical charac- 
ters and less tendency to congenital variation, 
although more succeptible to acquired abnor- 
malities, chiefly the results of rachitic condi- 
tions. The ears of many show an almost spe- 
cific character in having the helix bent on itself 
and compressed at the highest fourth of the 
ear; the arms are slightly longer, and in gen- 
eral the bodies of the negro children show less 
adipose tissue and more muscular development. 
All in all, the report deserves to be read with 
care. 105 NG 10 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
YALE University has conferred the degree of 
LL.D. on Professor Charles Sedgwick Minot, 
of Harvard Medical School, and on Dr. Emory 
McClintock, of New York, lately President of 
the American Mathematical Society. 
HARVARD University has conferred the de- 
gree of LL.D. on Professor Arthur T. Hadley, 
President-elect of Yale University. 
HoBartT College has conferred the degree of 
LL.D. on Professor W. K. Brooks, of the Johns 
Hopkins University. 
PROFESSOR NEWCOMB attended the meeting 
of the Paris Academy of Sciences, of which he 
is the only American honorary member, on June 
12th. 
FRANK SCHLESINGER, PH.D. (Columbia), has 
been appointed an observer in the United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and will be 
stationed at Ukiah, Cal., where he will take 
part in the international plan for the determi- 
nation of the variation of latitude. 
M. Henri MoissAn was elected an honorary 
member of the German Electro-chemical So- 
ciety at its recent meeting at Gottingen. 
