Dr. Bonger’s thesis, doubtless, will have the effect of increasing the number of Americans who regard environment as the greatest contributory cause of crime and who place heredity or innate criminality in a subordinate position, though many may continue to regard these matters as of greater importance than the author attributes to them. The author does not hesitate to express his contempt for the theory recently espoused by some Americans that “sterilization” may be an effective method of reducing the “army of criminals.” “One should be inclined to ask,” he says, “if the advocates of ‘sterilization’ have never heard of Australia, where a considerable number of inhabitants have descended from the worst of criminals and where yet the rate of criminality is low.” The Australian might reply that this is not a fair test, for at the time England was transporting so many of her criminals to Australia, the English criminal code was so drastic that “the worst of criminals” constituted but a small per cent of those who became its victims. But this observation does not militate against the correctness of the Doctor’s observation that “sterilization” is “as useful as the efforts to stop with a bottle a brook in its course.” If the advocates of “sterilization” are wrong in their theory, it is only illustrative of the fact that we Americans have been so busy developing a new country that, until very recent years, we gave no thought to the immense problem of the causes of crime, or attempted to apply to the subject any sort of intelligent, to say nothing of scientific, consideration. When at last it dawned upon a few of the American people that the cost in dollars and cents of dealing with our crime problem, to say nothing of the incidental economic waste, exceeded a billion dollars annually, or, as Professor Münsterberg in one of his books forcibly puts it: “that this country spends annually five hundred millions of dollars more on fighting the existing crime than on all its works of charity, education, and religion”,—it began to be considered worth while to study this tremendous social problem with a view, if possible, of improving conditions. Those who investigated the subject found little in the way of statistics or reliable data upon which to base a study of conditions with a view of applying remedies. Some few had written upon various phases of the subject. It was not, however, until the organization of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology in 1909 that intelligent direction along practical lines was given to a study by Americans of this great social and economic problem. The Journal of the Institute was the first periodical of its kind published in the English language. In Continental Europe a number of such journals were being published and many students of the problem had contributed valuable works upon different phases of the subject. The American Institute has deemed the quickest way for Americans to