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The various industrial operations of the Asylum have been carried on with a reasonable degree of success.

The farm and garden have in the main supplied the wants of the household not only in the way of summer vegetables but also for the winter use.

The shoe-shop and brush-shop, established for the purpose of occupying the larger boys during the winter months when farm and garden work is not available, have more than met their expenses.

The amount of house-work and sewing done by the girls is largely in excess of that done in former years. In fact, in the household department the capacity for such occupations developed among the girls has been a surprise to those in their immediate charge.

ALONZO B. CORNELL,
NEIL GILMOUR,
GEO. F. COMSTOCK,
N. F. GRAVES,
ALLEN MUNROE,
F. D. HUNTINGTON,
ALFRED WILKINSON.

SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.

To the Trustees of the New York Asylum for Idiots:

GENTLEMEN: -- I herewith submit a report of the Institution of which I have the immediate charge, for the year ending September 30, 1879.

The whole number of pupils connected with the Asylum during that period was 316.

Two hundred and fifteen of this number were inmates of the Asylum for the entire year; either because they had no homes to go to, or their homes were so remote and the family circumstances so limited, that their friends were not required to remove them during the annual vacation.

The average attendance for the school year was 274.

The total cost of maintenance and instruction, including all expenses except clothing, was $46,432.91.

The average annual per capita cost was, therefore, $169.47.

The sum named as the total cost of the year's maintenance does not correspond with the disbursements as stated in the treasurer's report, because that includes the payment of the debt existing October 1,1878, two years' supply of coal, and thirteen months' instead of a year's wages of attendants and servants.

A few of the older girls were dismissed during the year to enter the custodial branch at Newark.

Others were dismissed because their terms of residence had expired or they had proved unteachable.

New pupils have been admitted to take the places of those who have left, so that we start on a new year with 285 pupils. This number it is proposed to increase to 300.

The social condition of the pupils is not very different from what it was two years since, when a tabular statement was made with this result. About twelve per cent from families in good circumstances pecuniarily; thirty-five per cent from families in quite moderate circumstances; the remainder, or fifty-three per cent, either paupers or from families quite indigent.

This has a bearing upon the probable future of most of our pupils. It is safe to infer that a large proportion of them will be a public charge for the remainder of their lives. They, therefore, need such training as will make them less troublesome and less expensive to their care-takers; in other words, less burdensome to society. This for the lower and less teachable class of cases. For the majority, in whom appropriate training and instruction develops a capacity for some form of simple industrial occupation, their natural unproductiveness will be much diminished.

The practical aim of those strive to ameliorate the condition of the whole class of idiots is to so train them and to regulate their habits, that they may contribute, to a greater or lees degree, to their own support for the remainder of their lives. At all events, this has been the aim of the management of this institution for now nearly thirty years. And certainly their labors have met with tolerable success.

During the period referred to, the annual reports of the Asylum have iterated and reiterated, so many times, the results in general and in detail, that it is hardly necessary to cover the ground anew in the present report. It may he safely asserted that the present working condition of the institution compares favorably with that of former years.

One point may be noticed, viz., its sanitary condition.

At the date of this report there is not a single case of sickness in the house. This has been true for a greater portion of the year. A few eases of mild scarlatina, last spring, constituted most of the sickness of the year.

With over three hundred on our list of pupils, and with an average resident population of 274, there were but four deaths, and these, incident to a general weakness or defect of constitution, characteristic of the whole class of idiots.

Of these one died of epilepsy, a second from malignant sore throat, the case being complicated by paralysis of the vocal organs.

Two other from meningitis or inflammation of the membranes of the brain. In these last though the ultimate sickness was brief, post mortem examinations revealed the fact of the existence of prior brain disease in infancy, which had been the cause of the idiocy.

Nor has this been an exceptional year. The institution has now been in operation for twenty-eight years. It has had on its list of pupils about 950 different individuals. Their average period of residence has been between three and four years. The total number of deaths during the whole period has been seventy-four. The average annual death rate has, therefore, been less than two per cent.