It is an interesting question as to whether there is a definite gap—a difference of kind between these poor, defective children and the markedly stupid boys and girls of some village schools. I am inclined to believe that there is. The one group does not pass by a gradual series into the other. It has been stated that in some remote country districts of England only one-third of the school children can be taught more than the merest elements of writing, reading, and arithmetic; the majority are immovably dull, only the minority are as bright as ordinary London children. But even the dull village children get so far as to master the elements of learning, and probably their brains are not structurally defective, but only inactive for the time being. They may hereafter become village Hampdens. It certainly does seem to be the fact that the villages are continually deprived of the more intelligent members of their population by the attractions of the big towns, and that only the duller portion stay to breed in the village like the blind animals in a cave. But dullness is not identical with feeble-mindedness. It is maintained that even in towns the multiplication of the hard-working, cautious, and capable section of the community is at a standstill. Its members seek comfort, intellectual exercise, and self-culture; they refuse to deprive themselves of these things, which cost money, and to spend that money on bringing up large families. On the other hand, the far more numerous “working-class” has no such ambition as a rule, and no anxiety as to what is to become of its offspring, however numerous. The more children the larger are the earnings of the family, and all in turn shift for themselves at an early age. The rates pay for such education as they require, and their parents have no desire to push them up the social ladder; but food, lodging, and clothes cost money. The working-man who desires to read, see things for himself, and be more than an animated cog on a wheel, cannot afford to have children and transmit to them that modicum of intelligence above the average which distinguishes him from his fellows, and demands for its cultivation the money with which he might keep a large family. Consequently the population is more and more largely replenished by the unenterprising poor and the unenterprising rich; the group which is enterprising and capable, and directs the work and thought of the civilised world, is, by the very qualities which make the increase of its strain desirable, debarred from contributing its fair proportion to the increase of the population. Is it possible for the community, by any system or by legislation, to overcome or evade this unfortunate tendency?