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 mason] anthropologic litera ture 773

But in his last three chapters the author is at his best. The anthro- pologist becomes the instructor of the legislator, the jurist, the econo- mist, and the sociologist. Agriculture, manufactures and trade, divorce and suicide, distribution of intellectuality, competition, migration, crowding of urban centers, color and stature in relation to city life, and (most important in view of the recent acquisition by the United States of an enormous tropical area) acclimatization and the government of the dark races are discussed in the light of ethnology.

Few works on anthropology published in 1899 represent more con- scientious labor or will deserve a larger audience. The Supplement, a handy volume of one hundred and sixty pages, is a list of all books and papers quoted, the arrangement being alphabetic by names of authors, and chronologically by titles thereunder. The index, occupying thirty pages, is a list of regions and topics in alphabetic order, the authorities on each being arranged chronologically. The author justly acknowledges the liberal help of the Public Library of the City of Boston in preparing the bibliography and in procuring the works.

O. T. Mason.

Experimental Study of Children. By Arthur Mac Donald. (From the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1897-98, chapters xxi, xxv.) Washington : 1899. 8°, pp. 987-1204, 1281-1390.

Dr Mac Donald has taken a series of measurements of the school children of Washington, D.C., and in the present paper gives the results of his inquiries. Most important among these are the results relating to the circumference of the head. The author finds that the circum- ference of the head increases with mental ability as j udged by the teacher. The circumference of the head is also larger among the non-laboring classes than it is among the laboring classes. These results are in line with Venn's observations on students at Cambridge, England ; and also with the selective series obtained by Porter in St Louis. The author also finds that colored children have a larger circumference of head than white children. This may be due to two reasons : The head of the negro, being more elongated, would have a larger circumference if it had the same size on the level on which the circumference is taken. Furthermore, the stiffness of the hair would probably cause an apparent increase in the size of the head of the negro child. Dr Mac Donald finds that white children are taller, but not so heavy as colored children, and that their height sitting is much larger than that of colored children. This agrees with the well-known fact that negroes have relatively longer limbs than whites, but is of interest as showing that this relation between

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