"O, I see now what he meant. I could not understand it before. Of course, he knew that was impossible, and so he could not see what Jesus meant." "David says, 'Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.' Poets sometimes speak of the womb of the morning, meaning the place where morning lies and grows until it is ready to burst forth in beauty on the world." "I like the Saxon word better than the Latin one, don't you?" "Yes, but as scientists use the Latin word we shall use that, so that we will know how to talk on these subjects scientifically. The uterus hangs suspended by two broad ligaments (marked _ll_ in the picture). There are also round ligaments from the back and front which hold it loosely in place. On the back of each broad ligament is an oval body called the ovary (marked _o_). "Do you remember once seeing in a hen that Ellen was preparing for dinner a great number of eggs of all sizes? That was the hen's ovary. _Ovum_ means an egg, and _ovary_ means the place of the eggs." "O, mother, women don't have eggs, do they? I don't like that." "Well, if you do not like to use the word egg we can say _ovum_, which, you know, is the Latin word for egg. The plural is _ova_. Or we may call the _ovum_ the germ, which means the primary source. The ovum or germ is a very tiny thing, so small that it cannot be seen without a microscope; 240 laid side by side would make only one inch in length." "O, mother, that is wonderful." "Yes, dear. The whole process of life is very wonderful and very beautiful. The uterus and ovaries belong to what is called the reproductive system. As I said, until now your vital forces have been employed in keeping you alive. Your nutritive system, your muscular system, your nervous system and so on, have all been busy taking care of you only; but soon your reproductive system will awaken and begin to take on activity." "And what does that mean, mother?" [Illustration: Ova.] "It means that you are entering on what is known as the maternal period of your life; are actually becoming a woman with all a woman's power of becoming a mother." "But you don't mean that a girl of fourteen could become a mother?" "Yes, it might be possible; but no girl of fourteen should be a mother, for she is not fully developed and her children will not be strong as if she had not married until after she were twenty." "But tell me, mother, all about it. I don't see now how the baby grows?" "Well, I was showing you the ovary in which are many ova. As the girl nears the age of fourteen, these ova start to grow and once a month one ripens and is thrown out of the ovary. It is taken up by the Fallopian tube, marked _od_ in the picture, and it passes down the tube into the uterus and through the vagina out into the world." "Can one tell when it passes?"