Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/78

 children have fine textured hair and skin, almost almond-shaped eyes, small round heads, and a thick tongue. They are fairly common in London, but are rarely found in the North of England. On the other hand, there is the Cretin type of child, who has "a dry, harsh, yellowish skin, with hard, wiry, coarse hair, very placid, with thick spade-like hands." This type of child is believed by Dr. Kerr to be very much more commonly found in the North than in London. Perhaps the reason may be that exhaustion produces one type of dullard (thus the Mongol children are usually born late in the life of the mother) while lack of natural stimuli may affect the offspring in quite another way. In any case it is pretty certain that within small areas even children vary almost as greatly as do sometimes the seams of a rock. In a single county—the West Riding of Yorkshire—the type of feeble-minded child presents strange contrasts.

Still there are signs which are more or less common to the children belonging to the sad army of the feeble minded. "A highly arched palate, unsymmetrical head, a want of volume about the frontal region, irregularities about the ears (which are sometimes blue, ill-shapen, very large, and standing out from the head) incurved little fingers, webbed fingers,