In these cases, we should rather attribute the source of this symptom to a loss of the firmness and tone peculiar to the uterine parietes during pregnancy, and which depends upon the increased activity of the circulation in them at this period: when this is considerably diminished, the uterine parietes will necessarily become more flaccid, and, therefore, less able to withstand the influence of gravity, or sustain the uterus in its proper situation. The embryo itself during the first two or three months is too small and too light to produce this symptom itself. The sensation (to the mother) of the child's movements is as fallacious an indication of the child's life as it is of pregnancy; nor can the absence of this sensation be looked upon as a proof of its death. Women are very liable to be misled in this respect; so much so, that it will be much safer for the practitioner never to allow his diagnosis to be at all influenced by their statements; the more so, as it applies equally to mothers of large families as to primiparæ. Thus cases every now and then occur where the patient declares her conviction that the child is dead; that she has not felt it move for several days before labour; that she feels altogether differently to what she did in any of her former pregnancies, and yet she is delivered of a healthy living child. On the other hand, we as frequently meet with cases where, up to the very commencement of labour, the patient asserts that she has distinctly felt the motion of the child, and yet she brings forth a child in such a state of decomposition as proves beyond all doubt that it must have been dead some eight, ten, or more days. As the sound of the foetal heart is the surest sign of pregnancy, so it is an equally certain proof of the child's life: but is the absence of this sound, a certain symptom of its death? at the best it is a negative evidence, and the value of it must entirely depend upon the skill of the ausculator and the care with which he makes his examination. If, after repeated and careful auscultation of the abdomen, the well-practised ear can no where detect a trace of the foetal pulsations, it may be asserted on very safe grounds that the foetus has ceased to live. This is more particularly the case during the last weeks of pregnancy, when the pulsations are stronger, and the bulk of the child, in proportion to that of the liquor amnii being absolutely, as well as relatively, greater. The distance between the heart and surface of the abdomen is less during the last weeks of pregnancy also; the child's movements are not so free as at an earlier period; and hence, if the foetal heart is beating, it will be more easily discovered.