On Friday morning M. Tarde presided, and M. Pugliese, of Trani (Italy), read a report on the criminal trial from the sociological point of view. The evidence which demonstrates the existence of a crime and of a criminal can only be duly weighed by a magistrate possessing much technical knowledge. It is not enough for him to be a judge or a jurist; he must be well acquainted with anthropological and sociological science; he must know the environment in which crime is produced, and the people who are born to live and die in this environment. He advocated the establishment by the State of a college for the education of magistrates. At present there is great confusion, and the magistrate is called upon to decide complex questions of which he is quite ignorant. The duty of the judge to demand the decision of science with the power to tread it under foot was a manifest contradiction. It was not reasonable that a medico-legal judgment should be over-ridden by a jury, and it was time to reverse the ancient maxim that the judge is the expert of experts. When it is a question of legal medicine, the medico-legal expert must be the judge. There should be a medico-legal commission, whose duty it would be not to express opinions, but to give decisions. That is the only way to avoid many scandals. M. Brouardel, from the medico-legal standpoint, said he was not able to accept the present which Pugliese offered him. Every trial had issues which were not medical, and here the medico-legal expert would be incompetent. Apart from this, he would be cautious as to using anthropological data at all. It was still premature, and to go too fast was to risk compromising everything. M. Benedikt agreed with M. Brouardel, and advocated the scientific education of lawyers, which M. Lacassagne also considers desirable.