_Institutional Education_ versus _Family Education_.--Which is preferable, institutional education or family education? There is much to be said on both sides of this question. Unquestionably, in the case of juvenile criminals and neglected children the advantages of family care are less conspicuous than they are in the case of abandoned children. The accumulation, under one roof, of children of the former categories involves the close approximation of numerous injurious germs, which would less readily develop if they were dispersed. Moreover, for such children it is even harder to find suitable foster-parents than it is for those who are simply abandoned. Few are willing to undertake the difficult task of bringing up such children, and fewer foster-parents still are in a position to give them a suitable upbringing. The strict handling they require is much easier to enforce in an institution or a colony than in an ordinary family. There is often good reason to be afraid that the juvenile criminal or neglected child, if boarded with a family, will corrupt the younger members of that family. The problem must therefore be solved on the following lines: In every case there should be a thorough medical examination of the child, and a careful study of its educational acquirements and capacities, and upon the results of this examination should be based the decision whether this particular child can best be dealt with in an institution or in a family. In making our decision we should never lose sight of the principle that, except in the case of the really bad children, the advantages of a family education should as far as possible be given. Only in the case of children with obstinate and unconquerable criminal tendencies is continuous institutional care essential; for abnormal children, prolonged curative educational treatment is requisite, as far as possible, in institutions or colonies founded especially for this purpose. The educational institution should be a place in which the pupils undergo a thorough bodily and mental cleansing process. When this has been effected, as soon as we have a right to assume that the child could be received as an inmate by an ordinary family without endangering the other children, then the sooner the child is removed from the unnatural life of the institution to the natural life of the family, the better will be its chances for the future. A reformatory institution which is to attain its ends must have characteristics resembling those of a modern foundling hospital. It must be a place at which those children who, for one reason or another, have to leave their foster-parents, can be received and cared for while another suitable home is being found for them; it must be the centre of supervision of the children placed in family care. It is true that at a reformatory a child is deprived of personal liberty and remains in the institution under compulsion, but the aim of the reformatory