workhouse, has resulted in imprisonment." "Again, the prison dietary is based on the opinion of experts, is framed on scientific principles, so as to represent a sufficiency, and not more than a sufficiency, of food for an average man doing an average day's work. The scale of tasks is based on the experience extending over many years of what can reasonably be expected from a man working his hardest during a given number of hours per diem. They believe that both the dietary and the tasks strike a fair average, so as not to err on the side of severity or leniency. As before stated, they can be varied on medical advice. The large and almost preponderating rôle played by medical officers of prisons is a factor that should be taken into account by anyone who attempts to compare prison with workhouse life. Public opinion properly exacts the most scrupulous care in all matters affecting the treatment of prisoners, and medical officers are always liable to criticism from outside persons for having failed to diagnose this or that malady, to have ordered this or that dietary, or to have prescribed this or that task. They dwell on this matter at some length, because they feel it necessary to guard against the impression which might be formed from the fact that a small section of the criminal community openly prefer prison to the workhouse, that therefore prison life is unduly attractive, that its conditions are not sufficiently rigorous, and that the whole edifice should be reconstructed to meet the special case of a few ne'er-do-wells who have lost all sense of self-respect, and to whom it is a matter of indifference whether they spend a few nights in a workhouse, a prison, or a barn. The diminution of this class is not, in our opinion, likely to follow from any alteration of prison régime; it might be modified if, as we venture to suggest, a more uniform system were established in workhouses, and a greater discrimination shown in the treatment of each case; it can only be effected gradually by a general improvement of social conditions, pending which the prison can only play a very insignificant part as a remedy for this evil; for no one can seriously contend that vagrancy is going to be cured by a succession of short sentences in the various local prisons of the country. So generally is this felt to be the case that strong expressions of opinion from responsible persons have been expressed in favour of some specific remedies being provided by the State for dealing with the admitted evil of professional vagrancy. It has been suggested that labour colonies should be established on the Belgian model, where the professional vagrant who now tramps from prison to prison could be detained for a long period of time. This system it is believed has worked well in some foreign countries. A necessary condition of its application would be some system of identification, so that a vagrant, after undergoing a sentence in one locality, should