It should be mentioned that, while a sexual curiosity exercised on younger children is, in girls about the age of puberty, an ill-regulated, but scarcely morbid, manifestation, in older women it may be of pathological origin. Thus, Kisch records the case of a refined and educated lady of 30 who had been married for nine years, but had never experienced sexual pleasure in coitus. For a long time past, however, she had felt a strong desire to play with the genital organs of children of either sex, a proceeding which gave her sexual pleasure. She sought to resist this impulse as much as possible, but during menstruation it was often irresistible. Examination showed an enlarged and retroflexed uterus and anesthesia of vagina. (Kisch, _Die Sterilität des Weibes_, 1886, p. 103.) The psychological mechanism by which an anesthetic vagina leads to a feeling of repulsion for normal coitus and normal sexual organs, and directs the sexual feelings toward more infantile forms of sexuality, is here not difficult to trace. It is not often that the sexual attempts of girls and young women on boys--notwithstanding their undoubted frequency--become of medico-legal interest. In France in the course of ten years (1874 to 1884) only 181 women, who were mostly between 20 and 30 years of age, were actually convicted of sexual attempts on children below 15. (Paul Bernard, "Viols et attentats a la Pudeur," _Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1887.) Lop ("Attentats à la Pudeur commis par des Femmes sur des Petits Enfants," id., Aug., 1896) brings together a number of cases chiefly committed by girls between the ages of 18 and 20. In England such accusations against a young woman or girl may easily be circumvented. If she is under 16 she is protected by the Criminal Law Amendment Act and cannot be punished. In any case, when found out, she can always easily bring the sympathy to her side by declaring that she is not the aggressor, but the victim. Cases of violent sexual assault upon girls, Lawson Tait remarks, while they undoubtedly do occur, are very much rarer than the frequency with which the charge is made would lead us to suspect. At one time, by arrangement with the authority, 70 such charges at Birmingham were consecutively brought before Lawson Tait. These charges were all made under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. In only 6 of these cases was he able to advise prosecution, in all of which cases conviction was obtained. In 7 other cases in which the police decided to prosecute there was either no conviction or a very light sentence. In at least 26 cases the charge was clearly trumped up. The average age of these girls was 12. "There is not a piece of sexual argot that ever had before reached my ears," remarks Mr. Tait, "but was used by these children in the