developed, and be from twenty to twenty-four inches in length, with a weight of about seven pounds on the average. If, at the lower end of the femur, the bone development known as the center of ossification be of the size of a pea, the child is fully formed; if larger than a pea, the child has lived after birth; if it be absent, not more than eight months can be ascribed as the life of the foetus, as a rule; but negative evidences cannot always be relied upon.

(2) Whether or not the prisoner has recently been delivered will be determined by examination of her, as above outlined. If she was recently delivered, the question whether or not the child in question is hers will be answered by the surrounding circumstances, much weight being given to the comparative state of the alleged mother with that of the child. It will also be important in this connection to consider color, birthmarks, etc., of the child as resembling those of the prisoner, although these are not very reliable, in and of themselves alone.

(3) In considering whether or not the child was alive at birth, it must be remembered that many natural causes, and also violence not criminal, may bring about the death of the infant. Protracted labor, death of the mother before delivery, her congenital debility, some disease of her vital organs, or a very contracted pelvis, hemorrhage-these are all among the natural causes of death of an infant. So, too, if the mother were alone at delivery, and so weak that she could not care for the child, it might die from exposure, from smothering in the bedding, or drowning in the birth-fluids.

If the child has set up an independent, extrauterine existence, the circulation of the blood will take a new course, and the umbilical vessels will be more or less obliterated; and if life continues for several days or a week or two, the umbilical cord will show corresponding stages of desiccation. If food be found in the stomach, it is certain the child has lived since birth. Perhaps the evidence of live birth most relied upon is the condition of the organs of respiration. If the infant is ordinarily mature and vigorous, a very few minutes of independent life will be sufficient for the lungs to become partially filled with air enough to establish the fact of natural breathing, and so of live birth. Before the lungs have air in them, they occupy a relatively small part of the chest; but after they have been expanded by breathing, their position is much more prominent, the pericardium (the membrane covering the heart) being nearly covered by them. But their best evidence of live birth lies, not in their volume while in the body, but in the various tests to which they may be subjected at postmortem.

Lungs unaerated (not supplied or filled with air) are dense and solid, do not crackle when cut or pressed, will sink in water, and have little or no blood in them. They are dark in color. After respiration has been established, they feel spongy, the margins are less sharp than before the air enters, and they will crepitate when cut or handled. With respiration will have come circulation, and the color of the lungs is changed from a chocolate or liver hue to pinkish or rose red.

The hydrostatic test should begin by placing the heart, lungs, and thymus gland en masse (in a mass) in a vessel large enough to permit their free floating or sinking, the vessel being filled with river or rain water at about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. If all sink, it is proof that the lungs have not been completely expanded by air; if they have been so expanded they will be buoyant enough to float the whole mass. Unless the mass floats, the lungs should next be separated from the other organs and tried again, by themselves; then the lungs should be cut into small pieces, perhaps half an inch in diameter, and these pieces tested. The fragments should then be pressed tightly, and again tested. If they still float, it is proof that the child has breathed. The lungs may float even though not aerated, as when they are more or less filled with gas from putrefaction. This may easily be distinguished from air in the lungs by the fact that gas is more readily pressed out than is air, and has a putrid odor. The hydrostatic test is qualified in this, however: the infant may have lived for a time without breathing deeply enough to aerate the lungs, or a disease such as pneumonia may so far deprive the lungs of their buoyancy that they will sink. But such conditions as these will doubtless be indicated somewhat by the size and development of the child, evidences of disease, etc.

(4) In addition to the natural causes of death of an infant, above mentioned, it should be remembered that various diseases of the mother may cause death of the infant before birth; also, death may naturally occur from pressure on the umbilical cord, thus shutting off

the child's means of sustenance before it has set up an independent existence. In addition to asphyxia resulting from pressure on the cord, suffocation, strangulation, drowning, exposure, and wounds, are variously resorted to as means of death of the newborn child. It should be borne in mind, however, that death might result accidentally from any of these causes, as well as by design; although it is probable that the surrounding circumstances will strongly indicate whether or not death was the result of design, and the same considerations will apply in determining the cause of death of an infant as that of any other death under suspicious circumstances. Marks of violence, such as fracture of the skull, bruises, etc., due to design, are much greater in extent and severity, usually, than those due to normal causes, such as contracted pelvis, etc.; but occasionally it is hard to distinguish between them.

CHAPTER IX.

LEGITIMACY AND PATERNITY-RAPE.

36. Legitimacy.-A legitimate child is one born in lawful wedlock, or within a competent time thereafter unless it is proven: (1) that the married couple had no possibility of access within the reasonable period of gestation; (2) that the husband was impotent or sterile. Paternity being denied by the husband casts a doubt upon the presumption of legitimacy, although where the pregnancy was so far advanced at the time of marriage that the husband must have known of it, this will be deemed a recognition on his part of both paternity and legitimacy. In most states, too, the statutes provide that when a man marries a woman who has a bastard child, and he recognizes and treats such child as his own, this will legitimize the child.

(1) Possibility of access or otherwise will be determined by the ordinary rules of evidence, and so the matter will not concern the medical jurist except as it touches upon the question of gestation. This period is subject to some variation in different women, and not infrequently in the same woman: her first pregnancy often terminating at seven or eight months, while the others proceed to full term. But the usual period is nine calendar or ten lunar months, counting from the time of the last menstruation. In some European countries, maximum and minimum periods