In many women, however, nutrition languishes even until the sexual organs enter into action, and determine a revolution under the influence of which growth is accomplished. Still it is certain that, for several years, the locomotive system predominates in young women, even in figures promising the ultimate development of the vital system in the highest degree. The second age of woman extends from puberty to the cessation of the menses, or, we may say, from the period of full growth, the general time of bearing children, to the time of ceasing to bear--generally perhaps from twenty to forty. It is at the beginning of this period that woman has acquired all her attributes, her most seducing graces. She is not now distinguished merely by the organs which are the direct instruments of reproduction: many other differences of structure, having a relation to her part in life, present themselves to our view. At this maturer age, the whole figure is, in the female, smaller and slenderer than in the male. The ancients accordingly gave seven heads and a half to the Venus, and eight heads and some modules to the Apollo. The relations between the dimensions of the different parts differ also in the two sexes. In woman, the head, shoulders, and chest, are small and compact, while the haunches, the hips, the thighs, and the parts connected with the abdomen, are ample and large. Hence, her body tapers upward, as her limbs taper downward. And this is the most remarkable circumstance in her general form. Owing to smaller stature, and to greater size of the abdominal region, the middle point, which is at the pubis in the male, is situated higher in the female. This is the next remarkable circumstance in a general view. The inferior members still continue shorter. In general, woman is not only less in stature, and different in her general proportions, but her haunches are more apart, her hips more elevated, her abdomen larger, her members more rounded, her soft parts less compact, her forms more softened, her traits finer. During youth, especially, and among civilized nations, woman is farther distinguished by the softness, the smoothness, the delicacy, and the polish, of all the forms, by the gradual and easy transitions between all the parts, by the number and the harmony of the undulating lines which these present in every view, by the beautiful outline of the reliefs, and by the fineness and the animation of the skin. The soft parts which enter into the composition of woman, and the cellular tissue which serves to unite them, are also more delicate and more supple than those of man. All these circumstances indicate very clearly the passive state to which nature has destined woman, and which will be fully illustrated in a future volume.