property. It appears that most juvenile criminals are undersized and sickly, and many have a feeble intellect, bluntness of feeling, or unstable will. The operation of heredity has fastened these defects upon them, as a rule, so that they must be regarded as belonging to a decadent class. Besides the production of such disabilities the influence of parents often operates to rear young criminals through the conditions and associations of the home. From this examination of the production of juvenile crime our author turns to consider measures of repression. He finds that the plan of suspended sentence is very promising, especially with first offenders. A fine which may be paid in installments, or, in other words, a sentence to compulsory labor without imprisonment, also commends itself to him, but he has little faith in the efficacy of corporal punishment, in spite of the recent advocacy of it. Ordinary imprisonment, which he discusses in considerable detail, he also finds unsuitable for the young. The corrective institutions that have become numerous of late years seem to him to go to the root of the difficulty, as they aim to correct the defective physical and moral condition of the juvenile delinquent, and thus aid him to keep from future lapses. Mr. Morrison urges more intelligent supervision of inmates after their discharge from such institutions, which could be combined with conditional release before the expiration of the term of commitment. The book can not fail to be of service to all who have to deal with vicious tendencies in the young.
It is a long step from the time when prehistoric man fashioned his rude weapons and battled with the rhinoceros and cave bear to the era of such a civilization as that of the Akkads, depicted for us by Mr. Anderson.[1] To these early Chaldeans Babylon and Assyria were indebted for their cuneiform characters and much of their culture. At Lippur, 3800 B.C., they possessed an extensive library. Some of their works on astronomy, being unearthed three thousand years later, proved sufficiently new to be studied by the Assyrians. In art they showed more skill than succeeding nations, and also made considerable progress in science, being acquainted with the sidereal year and reckoning the latitude of stars. They used the clepsydra, lever and pulley, lenses, and possibly telescopes, since tablets have been found apparently referring to the four moons of Jupiter.
It is almost incredible that the name and memory of a nation so extensive as to include all of Asia Minor and northern Syria, and powerful enough to be courted by Egypt in the time of the great Sesostris, could be blotted out of history for two thousand years. Yet this is tho care in regard to the empire of Khita, and the story of her greatness has to be interpreted anew for us from the walls of Thebes and Egyptian temples. The Hittite inscriptions which are found in Asia Minor are as yet a riddle to scholars.
Other of the ancient civilizations happily did not fall into such oblivion, and concerning the distinctive features of each of these—Babylonia, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Hebrews, the Arabs, and ancient Persia—the author discourses ably and graphically.
- ↑ The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the East. By Robert E. Anderson. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 213. Price, 40 cents.
