The neglect by both the local and central government to provide any supervision of feeble-minded children has had a special result of a strange and unhappy description. Let me hasten to say that now that we have secured by recent legislation the vitally important medical inspection of children in connection with Board schools, and the registration and official inspection of feeble-minded children which will surely be made compulsory before another year has passed, the danger of which I am about to speak will very shortly no longer exist. It is this. Feeble-minded children (whose condition falls short of that of actual idiocy) are almost impossible to manage as members of an ordinary family or household. Their condition is often not properly recognised; their parents or guardians find them to be obstinate, unteachable, and dirty. Often, when the family is poor, they are, under these circumstances, “boarded out” for a very small payment, or even taken charge of, out of charity. None of the persons concerned in these transactions know that they are dealing with a hopelessly unteachable child, born with this defective brain. They find scolding has no effect in guiding the child, mild chastisement fails, and the poor ignorant foster-parent (sometimes even the child’s own mother) becomes exasperated and determined to subdue what seems to be mere obstinacy and indifference. The awful demon of cruelty is let loose. What seems at first a virtuous determination to control and regulate the child’s behaviour for its own good leads to the infliction upon it of blows of savage violence, then to the less dangerous but revolting attempt to enforce obedience by the pain caused by a burn, and to starvation as a final instrument of discipline. A very large number of the cases of cruelty to children and adolescents which from time to time are brought into the law courts have their origin in the fact that the victim was “feeble-minded,” and that the guardian found guilty of cruelty did not (any more than do the judge and jury) understand or, indeed, know anything at all about such a condition. Often the feeble-mindedness itself has been attributed to the cruel treatment of the child, whereas the latter really was set going by the former. To a large extent the community is to blame for allowing “feeble-minded” children to be boarded out except in proper medical institutions, guaranteed and inspected by State authority. It is the same story as that which was once common enough in regard to “lunatics,” but has now been put an end to by the law. The boarding-out of children, whether healthy or weak-minded, should in all cases be illegal, except under proper official sanction and guarantee. It is not only for the sake of the children that this provision is necessary. It is certain that foolish people have been led, in the absence of all restraint and interference by public authority, to undertake without evil intention the care of