The first suggestion of an international congress of criminal anthropology arose in Italy, and dates from the year 1882, when Salvatore Tommasi published an important article in the _Rassegna Critica_. The first congress, that of Rome, was not, however, actually held until 1885. It was attended by all the most distinguished criminal anthropologists, criminal sociologists, and jurists of the “positive” school, chiefly Italian, French, and German, and its _Actes_ are of great interest. The second international congress was held in August 1889, in Paris. It was of a more cosmopolitan character than the first, and of even greater interest.[14] France has always been a laboratory for the popularisation of great ideas, and Tarde’s _La Criminalité Comparée_ is among the best of such attempts. M. Tarde is a _juge d’instruction_, not an alienist or an anthropologist; he touches on all the various problems of crime with ever-ready intelligence and acuteness, and a rare charm of literary style, illuminating with suggestive criticism everything that he touches. This easily accessible little volume of the Libraire de Philosophie Contemporaine is the most comprehensive introduction for those who would go down to the _città dolente_ by a rose-strewn path. Lacassagne, the eminent medico-legal expert of Lyons, and editor of the valuable _Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle_, stands perhaps at the head of French criminal anthropologists, although beyond his monograph, _Les Tatouages_, he has published little. The judicial qualities of his mind, and his power of expressing just and large conceptions in felicitous and memorable phrases, impart value to all that he writes, and his forthcoming work on the criminal man will, it is probable, for all practical purposes, supersede other works. _De la Criminalité chez les Arabes_, by A. Kocher, a pupil of Lacassagne’s, is a book of great interest, and the names of Manouvrier, Bournet, Corre, Laurent, etc., are well known in connection with criminal anthropology in France, while Féré ably represents the French school which explains criminality by degeneration alone.