It was Orfila’s opinion that criminal abortion was most frequent in the two first months of pregnancy. This would naturally have been supposed the case, as then some doubt might always obtain regarding its existence, and the excuse that the measures resorted to were for the purpose of preventing ill effect from an abnormal menstrual suppression would be more available. Devergie, on the other hand, was inclined to put the limits of greatest frequency at from three months to four and a half; while Briand and Chaudé thought the crime more common in the third month than the fifth, and in this last month much more frequent than even in the first or second. Tardieu also came to a similar conclusion.[95] He ascertained, that of 34 cases investigated by himself, 25 were in from the third to the sixth month, most in the third; 5 in the first two months; 4 in the seventh and eighth; or that the cases in the third month, or shortly after, were five times as numerous as at either an earlier or a later period, and nearly three times as numerous as in both combined. Upon examining the Register of the Morgue, we find its statistics strikingly corroborative of these deductions. We have already seen that from 1837-54 there had been deposited at the Morgue 692 fœtuses of less than nine months. Of these, 23 were from the first to the second month; 79 ” ” second to the third; 108 ” ” third to the fourth; 158 ” ” fourth to the fifth; 150 ” ” fifth to the sixth; 97 ” ” sixth to the seventh; 48 ” ” seventh to the eighth; 29 ” ” eighth to the ninth. It has been stated that 519, or five-sixths of them all, were not over six months, and it now appears that on a scale twenty times larger than that given by Tardieu from his own experience, nearly two-thirds of the fœtal deaths induced by abortion were in from the third to the sixth month of pregnancy; the three periods included giving a much larger proportion than any others, and the two last of them being almost identical. The extreme paucity shown by the above table in the first and ninth months, and the decrease in the seventh and eighth from those preceding, are worthy of remark. It is probable that the sudden increase may be attributed to mental reaction after the first shock occasioned by the absolute certainty of pregnancy is past; and the subsequent decrease to the fact that in many attempted criminal abortions during the later months children are born alive, the mother’s courage then proving insufficient for infanticide and its greater and more probable punishment.