If there are no traces of blood, or of that peculiar unctious substance, the _vernix caseosa_, on the body, sufficient time must have elapsed since its birth, to have afforded leisure and opportunity for cleansing it. The contraction of the umbilical arteries in living children, does not occur sooner than after eight or ten hours. The mummification of the cord commences after two, three, or even four days, and the putrefaction only after a much longer time. Mummification of the cord takes place as well after death as before, but not in water, nor in the liquor amnii. If the umbilicus has already cicatrized, the child must be at least five days old. The stomach immediately after birth, contains a small quantity of quite white, transparent, seldom somewhat bloody, inodorous mucus, very tough, or a trifling quantity of the colorless liquor amnii. If milk be found, it shows that some time must have elapsed since the birth. In the large intestines meconium is still to be found, two, three, or even four days after birth. The age of a child, evidently older than five or six days, can only be determined by general appearances. _What was the cause of death?_ We will here refer only to those injuries and kinds of death as can only occur in new-born children, and to those _post-mortem_ appearances which might lead to error in regard to them. During labor, death to the child may result from cerebral hyperæmia, or from injuries to the cranium, which are then unattended by traces of violence on the body, and are frequently due to imperfect ossification of the bones, detected by holding the bones up to the light after removal of the periosteum. Prolapse and pressure of the cord, and coiling of the cord around the neck, may produce all the appearances of death by suffocation. The mark of the cord runs uninterruptedly round the neck, is broad, circularly depressed, grooved, never excoriated, and everywhere quite soft. A mummified, parchmentlike, unecchymosed depression, with or without excoriations, points to intentional strangulation. Subsequent to birth, the child may have been killed by falling on its head on the floor, if the birth has been very rapid. The probable results of such a fall, would be rupture of the cord; premature separation of the placenta, with its consequences; concussion of the brain and hyperæmia, or actual hæmorrhage within the skull; and fracture of the skull bones. The fractures are almost exclusively confined to the parietal bones, one or both, chiefly in the region of the vertex. Comminuted fracture of several bones of the skull, speak against an accidental death by a fall. The absence of any signs of violent usage on other parts of the body, or about the head, with simple fracture of the skull, speaks for an accidental death.