_Illegitimacy and Child-Protection._--The mortality and the criminality of illegitimate children are important elements in general mortality and general criminality; they are closely dependent upon the legal position of illegitimate children, and one of the principal aims of child-protection is to diminish criminality and mortality. For these reasons, the legal position of illegitimate children exercises a decisive influence in determining the methods and the intensity of child-protection. The history of illegitimate children would, as a rule, be even more tragic than it is, if the community at large and the State intervened only in order to counteract the disadvantages resulting from the inferior legal position of illegitimate children, and if no attempt were made to undertake the work of child-protection from the point of view of criminal law or from that of local administrative activity. But when we study the position of child-protection in the individual countries of Europe, we see at once that that position is influenced mainly by one consideration, namely, the legal status of the illegitimate child. Numerous and important branches of child-protection--the care of foundlings, for instance--are concerned chiefly with illegitimate children; and in other departments of child-protection the protection of the illegitimate must be more vigorous than that of the legitimate. But the more unfavourable the legal status of the illegitimate child, the more energetic must intervention be from the side of criminal law and from that of local administration, not only for the protection of the illegitimate themselves, but also for the protection of society against the illegitimate. Where the status of the illegitimate child is a favourable one, the importance of child-protection by means of criminal law and local administrative activity is much less than elsewhere. The Teutonic and the Latin methods of dealing with illegitimate children are distinguished by the fact that in the Teutonic States inquiry into paternity is permitted, whilst in the Latin States it is forbidden. Where the Latin system prevails--that is, where inquiry into paternity is forbidden--as in France and Italy, the local authorities find it necessary to board out more children than in those countries in which the inquiry into paternity is allowed; for in the latter a larger proportion of unmarried mothers secure an allowance for maintenance from the fathers of their children, and for this reason more illegitimate children are boarded out directly by the mothers. An assimilation of the legal status of legitimate and illegitimate children would obviate numerous evils, so that a few paragraphs in the code of civil law would render superfluous a considerable proportion of the child-protection now dependent upon criminal law and local administrative activity.