No, the maternal sacrifice theory will not bear examination. As a sex specialized to reproduction, giving up all personal activity, all honest independence, all useful and progressive economic service for her glorious consecration to the uses of maternity, the human female has little to show in the way of results which can justify her position. Neither by the enormous percentage of children lost by death nor the low average health of those who survive, neither physical nor mental progress, give any proof to race advantage from the maternal sacrifice.--_Women and Economics._ CHAPTER XVI Birth and Beauty “Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait. Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.” TAGORE: _Gitanjali_. When all goes well and there is no accidental hastening of the birth by shock or jar which dislodges the child too soon, the birthday finds its place in the ordinary rhythm of the woman’s existence. We speak generally of the “nine months” during which the child is borne by its mother, but this nine months is a fictitious number depending on our calendar months, and the developing child is actually ten lunar months within its mother. Just as the average almost universal period of the woman’s rhythm has twenty-eight days cycle, so on this number of days does the circle of months leading to birth depend. Ten months of twenty-eight days each is the full period of development, at the close of which the child seeks its exit through birth. As a rule the day of birth corresponds to some extent, if not quite accurately, to the former rhythm of her menstrual waves. An interesting paper containing various scientific data (not all of which are universally accepted) is to be found in the _Anat Anzeiger_ of 1897 by Beard. What is actually the spring behind this rhythm is as yet largely unknown, but recent work on the internal secretions from the ovary such as was described by Starling in the _Croonian Lecture_, 1905 (who quotes Marshall and Jolly and other workers), appears to indicate that this function like so many others in our system is due to the activities of certain glands yielding internal secretions. These, penetrating the whole system, have a controlling influence upon activities remote from their source. For the birth itself, the mother should be in experienced hands, preferably those of a highly trained and certified midwife or maternity nurse such as Queen Charlotte’s or the London Hospital supplies, one who is experienced in all that has to be done in normal, healthy circumstances, and who can detect at once any necessity for specialized help. If the mother has lived rightly and wisely, dieted as I suggest and is properly formed (as, of course, should be assured through examination some time before the birth is expected), the birth should be, however terrible an experience, yet one which is safely passed.