born later but before the natural end of pregnancy. Experience has
taught that the probability of success in rearing the child increases
rapidly after the seventh month. This is reasonable on the following
somewhat theoretical grounds. The digestive organs later attain a
higher state of perfection, and are better prepared to carry on their
work satisfactorily. Moreover, the gradual deposition of fat beneath
the skin during the last two months of pregnancy materially assists
in fitting the child for the conditions met with in the external
world, since the fat affords a barrier against the escape of heat
generated within the body, making it much easier to keep the child's
temperature at the normal point. Even other more technical reasons
could be given to demonstrate the error of the superstition regarding
the seventh-month child--a conviction endorsed by medical men
hundreds of years ago and as yet not discarded by the laity.

When pregnancy has reached "term," the child, having completed its
prenatal development, is ready to cope with conditions as they exist
in the external world. At term the average child is twenty inches
long and weighs 7 1/7 pounds (3,250 grams). The length is remarkably
constant; but the weight, as is well known, is often somewhat above
or below the average figure. In a general way, smaller children occur
in the first than in subsequent pregnancies, and, moreover, may be
expected when the mother is a small woman, or poorly nourished, or
has worked hard during her pregnancy. On the other hand, a tendency
to bear large children is present when the opposite conditions
prevail. It is not unusual to see infants weighing eight or nine
pounds at birth, but babies of more than ten pounds are rare, and the
fabulous, though not infrequent, reports of fifteen and twenty-pound
infants are probably not based upon actual weighings, but upon the
impression of someone who has merely seen the child or perhaps