September 20, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



453 



had a right to have an opinion and to ex- 

 press it. Then it came to be believed and 

 advocated that in this class of defectives 

 were many who were amenable to instruc- 

 tion if it were only of the right kind and 

 taught in the right way. The children 

 might be reached and helped. 



First it was thought that many of these 

 children could be educated to make their own 

 way in the world. Finally it was decided 

 that while many of them could be taught 

 to be self-supporting under direction, but 

 very few could ever leave the fostering care 

 of the institution. Children they are and 

 children they will be as long as they live. 

 For, though they become old in years, men- 

 tally they will still be children. 



More and more came the conviction that 

 there should be custodial institutions. 

 These were especially advocated for feeble- 

 minded women under forty-five years of 

 age. They would be safe and with no pros- 

 pect of reproducing their kind. Now it has 

 come to be regarded as the proper right and 

 duty to retain control over these grown-up 

 children during life. Some states have 

 made a beginning for this purpose. 



Never did we appreciate so strongly as 

 we do to-day the untold misery and accu- 

 mulating expense caused by the lack of 

 control of our feeble-minded population. 

 Their fecundity and animal instincts make 

 them fit subjects for consideration, both on 

 financial and moral grounds, to say nothing 

 of the dangers that beset those of strong 

 minds who have weaker bodies. 



The problem presented to us is the man- 

 ner in which these conditions shall be met. 

 Its solution lies in an intelligent and gen- 

 eral knowledge of the subject by the public, 

 preventive measures by legal marriage re- 

 strictions and other means, the education of 

 feeble-minded children and the custodial 

 care of feeble-minded women. 



Amos W. Butler. 



Indianapolis, Ind. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Anatomy of the Cat. By Jacob Reighard, Pro- 

 fessor of Zoology in the University of Mich- 

 igan, and H. S. Jennings, Instructor in 

 Zoology in the University of Michigan. 173 

 original figures by Louisa Burridge Jen- 

 nings. Henry Holt & Co. 1901. 8vo. Pp. 

 ix + 498. 



Teachers and students alike will welcome the 

 appearance of this admirable text-book because 

 it is practically the only work which treats of 

 the entire macroscopic anatomy of the cat, the 

 mammal most generally available for class-room 

 study. Of the books on the cat hitherto pub- 

 lished none unites in itself all the requirements 

 of a satisfactory text-book ; they are either in- 

 accurate and diffuse or accurate and meager, 

 while another class which covers parts of the 

 subject exhaustively is not available because in- 

 complete. "We believe that, with the aid of this 

 present work, a teacher will find no difliculty 

 in conducting a thorough laboratory course and 

 can cover the entire ground in a college year. 

 The authors are to be congratulated, not only 

 upon producing a book which will secure a 

 higher grade of class-room work, but also upon 

 the completion of an important scientific con- 

 tribution which cannot fail to stimulate and en- 

 courage a wider teaching of elementary anat- 

 omy. In one sense this is not an elementary 

 work ; the descriptions are scientific and con- 

 cise, without attempt at popular writing. More- 

 over, it presupposes a knowledge on the part of 

 the student of such general matters as the na- 

 ture of tissues, the functions of organs and the 

 meanings of scientific terms. Hence its use 

 would seem to call for accompanying lectures 

 or for previous preparation in courses on his- 

 tology and general biology. 



We are glad to see that the authors have not 

 cast the book in the form of a laboratory guide ; 

 structures are described in their proper order 

 and relation, the amount of space devoted to 

 the different systems of organs being determined 

 not only by their relative importance, but also 

 by the amount of work on each which can be 

 expected from the average student. Thus, for 

 example, almost one-half of the entire work 

 is devoted to a description of the bones and 

 muscles, and but one-eighth to the viscera. 



