ensue from a fall on the floor in cases of sudden and quick labours, especially if the woman be in the erect posture at the time of delivery. 2. _Induced with Criminal Intent._--Infanticide by commission: was the death due to violence? The answer to this question is by no means easy. In all doubtful cases the attendant circumstances must be taken into consideration. A woman may unintentionally injure her child in her efforts to drag it from her. The presence of respiration, more or less complete, is strongly presumptive against the death being the result of accident. But even here considerable caution is necessary, for the injury may not be immediately fatal, although accidentally inflicted, sufficient time elapsing between its infliction and the death of the child to allow of respiration. Foreign bodies found in the mouth and fauces are also corroborative of death by violence. A case is recorded in which the child‘s fauces, upper portion of the œsophagus, the larynx, and the trachea were closely packed with a coarse green sand, and yet the lungs sank when the hydrostatic test was applied to them. There was nothing to show when the packing of the fauces was effected. Strangulation may be produced by the constriction of the umbilical cord round the neck, and for this reason marks round the child‘s neck cannot always be ascribed to intentional violence. Of 327 cases collected by Elsässer, in which the cord was from one to four times round the children‘s necks, there was not in a single instance any mark of the cord perceptible, even though in some cases the cord had to be cut to permit the completion of labour. With regard to marks round the neck of a new-born child, Casper remarks that it is possible “to mistake the folds of the skin, produced by the movements of the head, and which remain strongly marked in the solidified fat, and are very prominent, particularly in short necks, for the marks of the cord.” The _mark_ left by the _funis_ is broad, corresponds with the breadth of the cord, runs without interruption round the neck, and is everywhere quite soft, and never excoriated. Ecchymoses may be present, irregularly following the line made by the cord. On the other hand, “a mummified, parchment-like, unecchymosed depression points in every case to strangulation by a hard, rough body,” and this more especially if there be any abrasion of the cuticle or laceration of the skin. Death, sometimes ascribed to strangulation, is probably the result of suffocation, and happens thus: any pressure exerted on the cord cuts off the blood from the placenta to the fœtus, and gives rise to respiratory attempts on the part of the child, the child dying from suffocation, or from the engorgement of the lungs with liquor amnii drawn into them at every effort to breathe. An infant may be poisoned. This cause of death is very rare, but deaths have resulted from the use of poisonous gases. While on this subject it may be advisable