Intercourse effected by force, or with a girl of immature age, is distinguished as rape, a punishable offence both in Germany and in Austria. The offence is defined as extra-marital intercourse with a female under the age of fourteen years, with or without the latter’s consent; or extra-marital intercourse with a female of any age against her will or deprived of the power of resistance—either by the use of actual force, by the employment of threats, or by loss of consciousness. With regard to the last specification, the law regards as rape intercourse with a woman unable to resist through loss of consciousness, whether that loss of consciousness is or is not produced by the direct action of the violator. In the female, the act of intercourse, alike physically, in its natural consequences, and mentally, is at once more difficult and of more enduring results than in the male. A writer of the new school, who according to his own admission has no other interest than the study of the sexual life, writes of himself: “I have often enough had intercourse with members of the other sex, in a few cases, indeed, out of pure inclination; but in all cases alike the aim and the result were the same—as soon as I had gained my end, the affair was finished. Passion, a bestial act, exhaustion, commonly a feeling of loathing; in the best possible case a fugitive but not an agreeable memory; voilà tout.” To women, such a description, happily, is applicable only in the most exceptional cases. With the completion of coitus, the voluntary and conscious action of the two parties to the act is at an end; the subsequent stages of the function of generation are independent alike of consciousness and will. When complete intromission of the penis has been effected, and ejaculation takes place, the semen is usually deposited at the os uteri or in the immediate neighborhood of that orifice. During the act of ejaculation, a peristaltic contraction of the vagina occurs, by means of which the semen at the os uteri is subjected to a moderate degree of pressure; the contraction and the pressure may perhaps persist for some little time after the completion of the coitus. In rabbits on heat, such contractions of the vagina, by means of which the semen was forced under pressure into the interior of the uterus, have been actually observed.