_Abortion, Premature Birth, Still-Birth._--The general causes of abortion, premature birth, and still-birth operate even more frequently in cases of illegitimate than in cases of legitimate birth. The chief causes are the following: (_a_) Keeping at work up to the time of childbirth. (_b_) Criminal abortion. (_c_) Syphilitic infection, which, as is well known, is intimately associated with extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. With regard to (_a_), unmarried mothers, who are for the most part working-class women, servant-maids, laundresses, sempstresses, &c., are commonly compelled to remain at work until pregnancy is far advanced. With regard to (_b_), the fear of disgrace and the prospect of poverty impel many unmarried women about to become mothers to attempt to procure abortion. These factors naturally affect town-dwellers to a greater extent than they affect persons living in the country. In Europe, miscarriages and still-births occur in cases of illegitimate births about 25 per cent. more frequently than in cases of legitimate births. These statistical data must, however, be corrected by the consideration of the following facts: (_a_) Many live-born illegitimate children are returned as still-born, in order to conceal the manipulations which were effected during or immediately after birth. On the other hand, many still-born children are returned as live-born, for the reason that many material interests may render such a misreport desirable. (_b_) The larger moiety of illegitimate births are children born to primiparae. For this reason, the percentage of still-births is greater than in the case of all legitimate births taken together--although the effect of the primiparous state of the mother is to some extent counteracted by the fact that the mother of an illegitimate child is commonly quite young.