It has been assumed by Bobertag (_81_), Stern (_88_), Goddard (_117_) and others that deficient children reach their maturity earlier than normal children. If this were true the curves of mental development for the average and for the deficient children should not be expected to retain their same relative positions after the idiots had begun to show arrested development. Moreover, unless this arrest were compensated by some peculiar form of accelerated growth among those above normal ability, we might expect that the distributions of ability would change in form at the various ages after arrest had begun. A relative increase in the distance of older deficients from the average as compared with younger deficients may be interpreted as meaning either the earlier cessation of growth of the deficients or a change in the relative rates of growth of individuals of different mental capacity. When fully considered the present evidence from the Binet tests fails, I believe, to demonstrate the earlier arrest of the deficients, although it is undoubtedly true that the Binet scale may not be fine enough to measure the improvement of idiots. We shall take up certain investigations that bear upon this point. Goddard has reported tests upon the same group of 346 inmates in an institution for the feeble-minded who were tested three years in succession (_117_). The paper suggests that the idiots, as a group increased less in absolute ability than those of higher mental age. The average gain for 55 idiots who tested I or II mentally was about half a test in the two years. In order to reach our present problem, however, we must know that the idiots, for example, developed relatively less mentally than did those of the higher grades of ability in the imbecile and moron groups of _the same life-ages_. This question cannot be answered from the paper. It probably cannot be adequately answered from mental age results on account of the irregularity in the value of the year units at different points on the Binet scales. Bobertag summarizes Chotzen's data obtained by the examination of the children in the Breslau Hilfsschulen with the Binet scale. He believes that the position on an objective scale attained by the average of these retarded children is progressively lower with advancing age relative to the average position attained by normal children, assuming that the quotient for normal children remained constant at each age. The average intelligence quotients of all the children in the special schools (exclusive of those testing III or less) was 0.79 for those 8 years of age, 0.72 for those 9 years, 0.70 at 10, and 0.67 at 11-12 (_81_, p. 534).