"Without, then, ascribing to nature frivolous fears, or confining her to details which she disdains, we may reasonably believe that after having alloted to different organs destined to aid in generation, the modifications most suitable to the conception of the child, and its preservation during pregnancy, she would afford those also which should, with the least inconvenience, effect its exit from the maternal bosom."[38] After describing the process of nature in parturition, Roussel goes on to say:--"O Rubens! I leave to your pencil the care of expressing that touching state in which the last impressions of abated pain still tinge the serenity of purest joy; where the melancholy, caused by sufferings now terminating, is not yet effaced by the most delightful sentiments which can animate the soul; where the dread of losing life, natural enough in suffering, gives place to the delicious pleasure of having presented it to a new being. But wherefore must it be, that this state is the price of a train of inconveniences, and a gradation of suffering often insupportable; and why are we here compelled to envy the kinds of animals amongst which pregnancy is without embarrassment, and delivery almost without a pang, or at least exempt from the sad or fatal consequences which so often follow it in the human species? It would, nevertheless, be wrong to tax nature with injustice.[39] We yet find races in whom her primitive impress has never been effaced by the abuses of a refined society, and amongst whom women enjoy nearly the same privileges as the females of animals. "The women of the Ostiaks, it is said,[40] never have any uneasiness about the time of their delivery, and take none of those precautions which European effeminacy renders almost indispensable. They are delivered wherever they may happen to be without any inconvenience; they, or the persons who assist them, plunge the new-born infant into water or snow, and the mother returns immediately to her ordinary occupations, or continues her march, if on a journey.[41] As these people dwell in the vicinity of the Samoeides,[42] between the fifty-ninth and sixtieth degree of north latitude, they do not fail to attribute this vigorous constitution to the severity of the climate.