184 General Notes. 
anthropologists will undoubtedly strive for the International Con- 
gress to be held in their city during that time. Their claim could 
be made with great show of right and would scarcely be ignored. 
It would be a source of regret if these two commendable projects 
should be made to interfere with, or nullify, the good that each 
might do. 7 
CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.—The importance of the subject of 
Criminal Anthropology has not been properly appreciated in our 
country. I doubt if any branch of the social history of man can be 
studied with such practical benefit to the whole people. 
Laws are still passed, and courts sit in its administration, as in 
olden time, the theory being to punish the criminal, not out of 
revenge, but for the prevention of crime. But in this principal 
object, the prevention of crime, the world has changed but little, 
and it is doubtful if it has improved any. There have surely been 
improvements in modern times in criminal jurisprudence, but they 
have been rather in matters of detail, pleading, practice, etc, In- 
dictments are more simple and direct. The disqualifications of 
jurors are lessened, many matters of mere form have been brus 
aside, all tending to the presentation of the truth to court and jury. 
The examination of the defendant as a witness is fast becoming a 
necessity. But with all this the science of criminal biology has 
received but slight attention from lawyers or law-makers. This, 
_ when done, must be done by anthropologists. The anthropologists 
of Europe are more interested in this work than are we of the | 
United States. They have taken the initiative. An international 
convention met in Rome in the autumn of 1885, and devoted a 
week exclusively to criminal anthropology. In France the ques- 
_ tion of the recidivists presses hard upon the attention of the govern- 
ment. I saw a man stood up in the dock who had been then con- 
victed of crime forty-two times. The Island of New Caledonia, in 
the South Pacific, serves as a prison for those who have been con- 
victed of felony more than thrice. The Anthropological Society of 
Paris has taken up the subject and is now studying it seriously. By 
a law of France, all executed criminals, possibly only those of 
Paris, are delivered to this society, and in its Musee Broca are now 
to be seen all their articulated skeletons with a bit of cork ars 
the void made by the guillotine in the cervical vertebra. I fee 
that I can speak on this subject with more than ordinary authority. 
I have practised at the bar as a lawyer with reasonable success for 
twenty-five years, not so much, however, in the criminal branch. 
During my six years’ consular life abroad there arose cases by 
which my attention was turned to the criminal system under the 
Code Napoleon. I was a member of the international congress for 
the reform and codification of the law of nations, and in my studies 
