THE last census bulletin on homicide is about the most complete and interesting investigation that has been published by the bureau. Among the eighty odd thousand inmates of American prisons over seven thousand are charged with homicide. The bulletin shows how these criminals are distributed by sections, by races, and by educational opportunities. The distribution by sections brings out no facts especially new. While the New England States show but fifty homicides to a million people, the Gulf States show upward of two hundred. The negroes furnish the bulk of the Southern homicides. Taking the country over, the negro population is but one-seventh the white population, yet the negro homicides are four-sevenths of the white homicides. When we analyze the white homicides, we find that thirty-two hundred of them were native born, against twelve hundred foreign born. But we native Americans have nothing to boast of. The reason the foreigners appear to furnish more homicides is because their children are generally counted among our native-born population. The last census showed three million foreign-born men over twenty-one as against eight million native-born men. If only adults are taken, therefore, the comparison is less satisfactory to our national pride. Our foreign-born citizens furnish fewer homicides than this adult population entitles them to. Among the foreigners, the Irish take the lead in the number of homicides. Though the Irish emigration to this country is somewhat less than the German, there were twelve hundred Irish parents of homicides against seven hundred Germans. Yet in proportion to this number the Irish make a far better showing than the Italians and the Mexicans. In the half-Mexican State of Arizona the ratio of homicides is twelve times as great as in New York and twenty-five times as great as in Massachusetts. It makes less difference what race a man belongs to than how well educated he is and how well fitted he is to earn an honest living. More than four-fifths of the homicides have no trade and thirty-eight per cent of them cannot read and write. Less than one-sixth of the people of this country are illiterate, and yet the illiterates form nearly forty per cent. of this criminal class. Every year prison statistics make it clearer that weak minds and bad educations, instead of being conducive to goodness, are almost regular accompaniments of crime.—Condensed from the New York Commercial Advertiser.