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Show STUDYING HUMAN NATURE. fVol and Valuable Scientific Work Now Being Carried on In Washington. A new kind of scientific work is be fng carried on in Washington, in which tb testing of 25,000 schoolchildren nejtaly, morally and physically is the" preliminary step. Dr. Arthur McDonald is conducting the work under the aus -pices of the United States bureau of education, ed-ucation, and the results whej arranged and tabulated are expected to throw valuable light upon a number of mooted questions concerning the raco. For example, it is desired to kno7 whether " boys of the laboring class are less bright than the sons of the well to da Are they as well nourished? la London not long ago investigation proved that the children of laboring people in that metropolis were betta nourished that is to say, weighed more at the same age than those belonging to higher social strata, the latter being fed on too much candy and cake. The work here being unfinished, conclusions con-clusions cannot be stated. To begin with, the height aiid sitting height of each child were taken. Long, bodied races, generally speaking, are inferior. It is desired to know if long bodied -Individuals are less clever or less strong than the short bodied of the same race Are long bodied boys and girls apt to be stupid? Long headed children are usually usu-ally talL Tall people are most often long headed. Tall races are superior. The question naturally follows, Are long headed children superior mentally? When it is said that a man has a long head, is there not significance in the remark? re-mark? Are tall children, then, superior? Nobody No-body knows as yet These are among the things which Dr. McDonald is tryiDg to find out. In the classification the 8,000 negro children in Washington schools have been kept separate, so as to compare them with white children. How do they compare in respect to brightness, weight, physical measurements, measure-ments, etc.? The colored child surpasses the white child up to 5 years of age in mental development, then tho wrhite child goes ahead. Comparisons of girla with boys naturally follow. At the age of entering womanhood girls weigh more than boya That age with city girls arrives a year earlier than with country girls. Boston Transcript. |