=Disproportionate Increase in the Number of Mental Defectives.--=Writing of conditions in England the Commissioners in Lunacy state in their fifty-fourth report that now (1901) there is one officially known lunatic to 301.32 individuals of population, whereas in 1859 there was only one to 536 individuals of population. In Great Britain, taking into account mental defectives of all kinds, the 1901 census showed a total of 485,507, or 1:85 of total population. Rentoul estimates that 1:50 would be nearer the truth because of the fact that the number of officially known mental defectives is much less than the actual number. The conditions in Ireland are even more impressive, for in 1851 there was one known lunatic to 657 individuals of population; in 1871, one to 328, and in 1901 one to 178. When all allowance is made in these statistics for the greater accuracy of recent enumeration, and for other modifying influences, such as migration, we are still forced to believe that an alarming increase in insanity is in progress and that society is woefully derelict in permitting the marriage of such unfortunates. A census of the insane under public care in Wisconsin June 30, 1910, not counting the paroled, shows 6,537, or one to each 357 of population, since the population of the state was then 2,333,860. If, however, we should add the number of insane in private sanatoria and the number unconfined the proportion of normal individuals would be very much reduced. In the United States as a whole, while I know of no data giving the number of married insane, it is estimated that at least one-fourth of the insane are not in asylums or hospitals. In all states the number of insane in state institutions (there are no available records of most private institutions) is rapidly increasing. According to the special census of 1903 covering a period of fourteen years, during which the general population increased thirty per cent., the number of insane in institutions increased one hundred per cent. This is due doubtless in part to the fact that because of better facilities for keeping them a proportionately greater number of insane are being sent to state hospitals than in former years. Moreover, improved sanitation has cut down the death-rate in asylums. The increase is in such vastly greater proportion than the increase in general population, however, that it seems impossible to attribute it wholly to the greater accuracy of recent enumerations and the increasing custom of confining the insane in asylums. This is a matter that demands our gravest attention and one that should be investigated with the greatest thoroughness. One of the most disquieting facts in the situation in most states is that many patients--an average of approximately one thousand a year, in Wisconsin for example--are on parole subject to recall. This means that although it is recognized that these patients are likely to have to be returned to the asylum or hospital,