It is precisely the same with the contractility of the stomach, the bladder and the intestines; most commonly we can produce no motion in these muscles by stimuli. Mr. Léveillé has already made these important observations; he has also remarked that the urine remained in the bladder, and the meconium in the great intestines, without producing a contraction sufficient to expel them. I do not think however that there could be during life a complete immobility of the gastric viscera, and for this reason; most commonly the meconium is only met with in the great intestines; it must have been formed in them then, if there was complete immobility of the gastric muscles; now it is much more probable that it is the residuum of the bile, of all the mucous juices, &c.; that consequently it has been pushed successively by a slow action from the superior part towards the inferior of the alimentary canal. The softness of the organic muscles renders their extensibility of texture very great at this period. I would observe however that the hearts of dead fœtuses do not exhibit those numberless varieties of size which those of adults do in the right side, according to the different kinds of death. II. _State of the Organic Muscular System during Growth._ The first days of existence are marked by an internal motion as quick in manifesting itself as the external of which we have spoken. The sucking of the milk, the evacuation of the urine and meconium, &c. are indices of this general internal motion, of this agitation almost sudden of all the involuntary muscles. It is not the brain which, entering into action at birth, produces the contraction of these muscles, since as we have said they are not under its government; it appears to depend, 1st, on the sympathetic influence exerted upon their system, by the cutaneous organ, which is irritated by the new medium; 2d, on the excitement made upon the beginning of all the mucous surfaces, and upon the whole of that of the lungs, an excitement which afterwards reacts upon these muscles; 3d, on that produced by fluids introduced into the stomach; 4th, on the sudden entrance of the red blood into all these muscles, till then penetrated like the others with black; this cause is essential; irritability appears to be in part dependant on it, or at least to borrow from it a remarkable increase of force; 5th, the excretion of the meconium and the urine is also powerfully assisted by the abdominal muscles, which then enter into activity with the whole system to which they belong.