conducting executions privately, and declared that capital punishment was a scientific method of removing anti-social elements. The debate was adjourned. In spite of the fact that the present French Government are mostly opposed to capital punishment, and that there has not been an execution in Paris for about ten years, public opinion is evidently inclined to insist upon the exaction of the supreme penalty. It is a pity that the statistics of crime in France are always so misleading owing to the arbitrary classification of murders. Crimes passionnels, for instance, are not regarded as what we call murders, and M. Reinach relied for his optimism chiefly on the distinctions between assassinate and meurtres. When the two are combined it certainly cannot be said that murder in France is decreasing.