est indiscretion is often the spark that kindles a fatal fire in the young and tender body.
It has already been stated that this period is marked by very notable changes, and particularly in the organs of generation. This development will infuse a new stimulus into the organism heretofore unknown to the child. It is not agreeable to our self-love to speak of ourselves as animals; but unfortunately our nature has an animal side which even our conceit cannot destroy. The most important of all these functions is, probably,
MENSTRUATION.
Menstruation is that which characterizes the development of puberty in the woman.
The time of its first appearance varies according to climates, national or individual constitutions, the manner of living, the occupation, the habits, the moral and physical education. It appears sooner in warm than in cold climates. In the neighborhood of the equator, it appears in girls of ten or eleven years, and even sooner; in the north, not before the fourteenth or fifteenth year or even later. Different habits, occupation, and education will cause girls to vary in the coming on of menstruation in the same city or locality. The one who leads a life of excitement, reads romances, and is very imaginative, will menstruate early; the other, retired and modest in her habits, of quiet disposition, kept within the sphere of innocence, will not menstruate till late.
Although the menses appear sometimes without any premonitory symptoms, they are generally heralded by a sense of lassitude, a sensation of weight in the lower part of the abdomen and in the loins, by heat in the parts, and by a '
