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This is the fifth edition of the standard English textbook on mental deficiency. We know of no other book which discusses amentia with such comprehensiveness. The clinical pictures and characteristic pathology of amentia and its legal status and social implications are described in a sane but liberal fashion. The methods of diagnosis, including the more commonly used mental tests, are given, and a form for case taking is added. The author also briefly reviews the training of the mentally deficient. His summary of the English Mental Deficiency Acts of 1913 and 1927 leads one to believe that the English have developed a legal formula which may well serve as a model for the rest of the world. The Act of 1927 breathes the spirit of the psychologist and psychiatrist. One paragraph defines the class of moral defectives as composed of "persons in whose case there exists mental defectiveness coupled with