6 most undesirable for high-grade and low-grade cases to be together; thirdly, and most important, none of the idiot asylums aim at permanent detention for their cases. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of the feeble-minded. It was to be deplored that idiots should be discharged after a period of training, no matter how admirable that training might be; it is a far greater danger to society that higher-grade mental defectives should be educated and then turned loose to become parents of a succeeding generation. After all, though idiocy by no means protects a man or woman from the dangers of parenthood, every one recognizes a driveling idiot; the more nearly the patient resembles a sane person, the greater the risk, and the greater the necessity for life-long detention. It is from the class of the merely feeble-minded that the ranks of the idiots and imbeciles are recruited. Probably the regulations of the idiot asylums as to detention were under the impression that idiocy was a curable disease - a trouble out of which persons could be educated. The impression is still widely prevalent, especially with regard to the feeble-minded. If only the statistics concerning these poor souls could be made to fit the law, we should have none over the age of sixteen - except, indeed, they were paupers under the Metropolitan Asylums Board. This Board has of late taken very wise action: it has sorted out its improvable certified cases and separated them from the low-grade patients at Darenth, and has also taken steps to secure detention for weak-minded pauper children up to the age of twenty-one. It is hardly to be doubted that by the time the children have reached that age the Board will desire further powers. But for the bulk of the weak-minded children the law assumes that their incapacity stops at the age of sixteen. That is, power is given to the education authorities to provide education suitable for their needs up to that age, if they [end]