; head Strong movements and cries as soon
disproportionate in size; membrana as born; body clear, red colour,
pupillaris present; testicles coated with sebaceous matter; mouth,
undescended; deep red colour of nostrils, eyelids, and ears, open;
parts of generation; intense red skull somewhat firm, and fontanelles
colour, mottled appearance, and not far apart; hair, eyebrows, and
downy covering, of skin; nails not nails, perfectly developed;
formed; feeble movements; testicles descended; free discharge
inability to suck; necessity for of urine and meconium; power of
artificial heat; almost unbroken suction, indicated by seizure on the
sleep; rare and imperfect nipple or a finger placed in the
discharges of urine and meconium; mouth.
closed state of mouth, eyelids,
and nostrils.
XXXI.--LEGITIMACY
A child born in wedlock is presumed to have the mother's husband for its
father. This may, however, be open to question upon the following
grounds: Absence or death of the reputed father; impotence or disease in
the husband preventing matrimonial intercourse; premature delivery in a
newly-married woman; want of access; and the marriage of the woman again
immediately on the death of her husband. In the last case, where either
husband might have been the father, the child at the age of twenty-one
is at liberty to select its father from the possible pair.
A child born of parents before marriage is in Scotland rendered
legitimate by their subsequent marriage, but in England the offspring
remains illegitimate whether the parents marry or not after its birth.
The offspring of voidable or invalid marriages may be made legitimate
by application to the courts.
There is a difference between being legitimate and lawfully begotten. A
child born in wedlock is legitimate, but if the parents were married
only a week previously it could not have been lawfully begotten.
The Acts and rulings relating to Marriage and Legitimacy are extremely
complicated. It is not putting it too strongly to say that a very large
number of people in this country who believe themselves to be legally
married are not married at all, and that thousands of children who have
not the slightest doubt as to their legitimacy are in the eyes of the
law bastards.
XXXII.--SUPERFOETATION
By superfoetation is meant the conception, by a woman already pregnant,
of a second embryo, resulting in th
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