THE usual period of gestation, (carrying the child in the womb,) as derived from extended observation by medical statisticians, is found to be forty weeks, or 280 days. Ladies generally count nine solar months, which is a little short of 280 days. The difficulty of determining from which particular act of cohabitation conception took place, and still more, the impossibility of knowing on what day the semen of the male impregnated the ovum of the female, (as this may not occur for some days after copulation,) renders certainty upon the length of gestation, to a day, quite out of the question in any case. But by close observation, and taking a great number of cases, it may be ascertained, to within a brief period, when conception has occurred, and from thence the average deduction of gestation may be drawn. But upon this point, as upon all others connected with the subject of gestation, it will be found that there is no fixed period for parturition to take place. It may occur before the expiration of 280 days; it may not happen till after that period. There have been undoubted instances where gestation has been prolonged to 300 days. The law of France fixes 300 days as the period, after death, or absence of the husband, wherein the child shall be considered legitimate. In Scotland, the term is ten months. In one case in this country, a child born 311 days after the decease of the husband, was decided by the Court to be legitimate; but physiologists would be dubious upon the legitimacy of the infant in a case so prolongated as this.

On the other hand, children are often born before the expiration of the 280 days. Seven and eight months’ children, that live, are by no means uncommon; and there have been recorded cases of children born at even so short a period as twenty-four weeks after conception, which lived; the child itself, from the formation and ossification it presented, giving evidence that it had not been a longer period than that in the womb. A Church Court, in England, decided a child legitimate born twenty-seven weeks after marriage. In cases of this kind, the child itself is the best evidence; the appearance it presents showing, to the medical man, generally, very near its foetal age. There are so many instances recorded, and well attested cases, where children have been born at a much less time, after conception, than nine months, that no woman should be accused or suspected of wrong in giving birth to a child a little short of the usual period, after marriage. It is exceedingly unjust to do so. The mortification which many sensitive ladies, entirely innocent of evil, experience, and the mental anguish they endure from such thoughtless remarks as the ignorant, upon these points, are too prone to make, leads me to hope that men and women will hereafter better inform themselves upon this subject, and from a better knowledge be induced to abstain from unjust conversation and condemnation.