598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ciety will in future study it, may be taken to be as follows : the 

 comparison and identification of the survivals of archaic beliefs, 

 customs, and traditions in modern ages/' So far, so good. 



But the truth is that the exact definition of the term " folk 

 lore " is still a matter in dispute. The proper place of the " sci- 

 ence of folk lore " remains to be settled. Thus there will be two 

 folk-lore congresses at the World's Columbian Exposition : one 

 congress to be held in the month of July, in connection with the 

 Department of Literature ; the other Folk-lore Congress to be 

 held in August, with the Congress of Anthropology. There is no 

 department of comparative folk-lore in any college or university. 



Finally, we attribute the rapid progress and popularity of folk- 

 lore study in America and in Europe to three reasons: (1) Folk 

 lore is a study to which almost every one can contribute some- 

 thing ; (2) folk lore is a study which throws a flood of light on 

 man's past mental evolution and culture-history, as the Germans 

 call the study ; (3) folk lore is a study in which the student of re- 

 ligions, the student of morals, the ethnologist, the antiquarian, 

 the psychologist, the historian, the poet, and the litterateur, each 

 finds a different interest and a different value. 



REFORMATORY PRISONS AND LOMBROSO'S THEORIES. 



By Miss HELEN ZIMMEEN. 



IN no branch of social science has so much progress been made 

 of recent years as in the treatment of the criminal. Mankind 

 in general has at last come to recognize what Sir Thomas Moore 

 knew long ago, that the end of punishment is " nothing else but 

 the destruction of vices and the saving of men." The prison has 

 become, and rightly, a moral hospital. Whether, however, we 

 are not now inclining to err a little too much on the other side in 

 our latter methods of prison treatment is a question that is exer- 

 cising the general public as well as criminal anthropologists and 

 professors of legal medicine. Are we not perhaps encouraging 

 rather than deterring crime by our present tendency to prison 

 philanthropy ? Do we not tend to make prison too pleasant a 

 place, so that those who have been there are apt to sing in an 

 irreverent spirit the words of the hymn that telleth — 



" I have been there, aud fain would go; 

 It is a little heaven below " ? 



Is it no longer good, as the gospel teaches, that the transgressor's 

 way be made hard lest a worse evil befall ? 



On all these points there is unquestionably no greater author- 

 ity in the world to consult than Prof. Cesare Lombroso, Professor 



