In the study of plants we learn that the pollen or male element must unite with the ovum or female element in order to produce the seed that will develop into the new plant. The same fact is true of the human race. Before pregnancy can take place there must be a meeting and fusion of the vital elements of the two sexes. This fertilization of the ovum or joining of the male and female elements is called conception. It is brought about by coitus, by means of which the semen of the male is deposited in the vagina of the female. This act is called insemination, although conception does not follow unless the ovum and spermatozoon (life-giving element of the semen) come together and unite. When this occurs the woman conceives and enters upon a period of pregnancy. The time at which conception is least likely to occur is from the seventeenth to the twenty-third day after menstruation ceases. During the first year of married life couples are liable to abuse the love sense by over-indulgence and thereby use up too much of their energy. This affects their health, especially that of the young wife, who finds herself always being tired and is unable to account for it. Her daily tasks become a drudgery, for she is too exhausted to have the strength to perform them. After the tasks finally are finished, she is too tired to don the afternoon dress, and so easily falls into untidy habits. This brings its train of results. The young husband, on his return from work, fails to find his wife the bright, attractive girl he married and gradually grows indifferent. The relation of intercourse to conception is a problem that each husband and wife must settle for themselves. Some educators claim that only for the one is the other allowable, that the bearing and raising of children is the sole aim of married life. Naturally this is the fundamental end of the sex instinct. But in the present-day, practical married life it would be impossible to convince the majority that the impulse of sex gratification was given to them for this one purpose only.