Developing an observation of Frassetto, which suggested shortness of the hallux as an atavistic stigma in criminals, Lombroso has investigated the relative lengths of the hallux and the second digit in series of normal and abnormal individuals.

The authoress has studied the characters of the pelvis in sixteen skeletons of male criminals in Lombroso's museum. In her paper she gives the details of the examination in each case, with tables summarising the results for the whole series. She finds that the pelvis in the criminal tends to approximate to the female type; and, though this type is generally admitted to be morphologically higher than the male type, she argues that the lack of sexual differentiation implied by this resemblance is to be properly regarded as an atavistic character, especially as it is in many cases associated with other peculiarities of a distinctly prehuman kind.

The elaborate and important anthropological investigations made during recent years by Prof. Pfitzner at the Anatomical Institute of Strasburg are well known. The present study deals with sexual differences in hair and eye colour, and in proportions of body and head, difference in age being always taken into account; and, from the care with which it has been carried out, and the large number of subjects dealt with, the study constitutes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this subject. As the author himself points out, certain sources of error exist; we are dealing with dead subjects only, in a hospital, so that there has been “selection by death” and “selection by hospital;” but even when we bear these sources of disturbance in mind the results remain very instructive. A few of the points brought out in this lengthy paper may here be mentioned.

After a retrospect of previous work on anencephalous births, Dr. Muralt proceeds to describe the skull and brain of two of those monstrosities. The first, a male child, born at full time, lived for two days, during which he cried lustily, swallowed, and showed the usual muscular motions and reflexes. His head resembled that of a cat, no forehead, the face prognathous, the nose and lips thick, and the eyes prominent. The head was covered with thick hair, and there was no roof to the cranium. The rudiments of the brain were shut in by a soft membrane. These structures are pictured in a large lithograph sheet, and their description fills seventeen pages of the Archiv.

Dr. Probst begins by remarking that he can only find two cases before that described by Rokitansky, in 1858, in which the corpus callosum was deficient, one by Reil in 1812, and one by Ward in 1846. He apparently has overlooked the case mentioned in Solly's book on the brain in 1827, and another by Paget in 1846. If Dr. Probst had lighted upon the excellent paper by Dr. Alexander Bruce, recorded in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xv, pp. 320—341, he would have been able greatly to add to the sixteen cases which he has mentioned. I have myself seen an instance of complete deficiency of the corpus callosum in the brain of a deaf woman who died in the Stirling District Asylum. There are at least six cases (Probst only knows of two) in which, without any mental deficiency or loss of sensory or motor power being observed during life, the corpus callosum was found to be entirely wanting.