The child may also have been suffocated by the mother in violent attempts at self-delivery. The visible signs of this will consist merely of scratches and nail-marks upon the face or neck. Very severe injuries are never produced in this way. We must be careful not to mistake the common blood-coagulum usually found under the aponeurosis on the child’s head for the result of violence; nor the folds of the skin, in fat children particularly in winter, produced by the movements of the head, and which remain strongly marked in the solidified fat, for the mark left by the cord in a case of actual strangulation. 3. Supposed Period of Death. The answer to the question as to the probable time of death, is often of the utmost importance. To be able to determine this, we must have regard to the various appearances following death, previous to putrefaction, and to the chronological succession of the phenomena of external and internal putrescence. =A.= _Signs of Death previous to Putrefaction._ Respiration and circulation have entirely ceased. The eyes have lost their lustre. There is no vital reaction to stimulants. The body grows ashy-white. A particularly florid complexion may retain its color for some days after death. Neither the red or livid edges of ulcers, nor red, black or blue tattoo-marks disappear after death. An icteric hue existing at death never becomes white, and ecchymoses retain in every case, the hue they had at the time of death. Most bodies become quite cold in from eight to twelve hours. Fat bodies and those of persons killed by lightning, or by suffocation, retain the heat longer than others; in water, bodies cool rapidly. A general relaxation of the muscular system occurs immediately after death. A body presenting only the above signs, has been dead from eight to twelve hours at the longest. In from twelve to eighteen hours the eye-balls become soft and inelastic, and feel flaccid. The muscles on those parts of the body on which it lies, become flattened by the weight of the body. In from eight to twelve hours after death, hypostases resulting from the gravitation of the blood in the capillaries, begin to form on all the depending parts of the body. The most important are the external hypostases—for they are liable to be confounded with ecchymoses, and consequently with traces of violence committed previous to death. An incision into the discolored spot should always be made, when, if it be an hypostasis—a post-mortem stain—there will be no escape of effused fluid or coagulated blood, as there will be if it be an ecchymosis, the result of violence previous to death. The color of these post-mortem stains varies from a livid or coppery-red to a reddish blue. They are extremely irregular in form, and are never elevated above the surrounding skin. They are formed after every kind of death.