delivered
of a vesicular mole with an embryo (Molitor). A girl began to menstruate
at the age of two, had a growth of hair on the pubes and developed mammae
at the age of three, and became pregnant at the age of eight (Carus).
With these cases must be classed that observed by Martin in America of a
woman who was a grandmother at the age of twenty-six. Lantier, in his
travels in Greece, speaks of a mother of twenty-five with a daughter of
thirteen."

Whatever the real sequence of events--whether in a little girl the
occurrence of sexual intercourse is favoured by the spontaneous
premature awakening of the sexual impulse, or, conversely, it is the
premature intercourse which awakens the impulse and keeps it active
thereafter--the consequences of premature awakening of the sexual
impulse are always extremely serious, and often result in the permanent
social extinction of the girl concerned. Although in many cases she may
be fortunate enough to escape the fate of the prostitute, none the less
in modern civilised countries the loss of virginity is a serious
disgrace, by which her future will be affected altogether apart from the
moral shocks resulting from sexual intercourse in early childhood, and
from the possibility of impregnation. The case is much the same as
regards children of the male sex. The fact that a boy is sexually
precocious, will greatly facilitate his being led astray by grown
females to whom his extreme youth acts as a stimulus. Moreover, his
sexual precocity may deliver the boy to the embraces of homosexual men,
an outcome which is rendered the more likely by the commonly
undifferentiated character of the childish sexual impulse. There are
certain homosexual adult males whose impulse is especially directed
towards boys still possessing the milk-white face of the child, and his
encounter with such a pervert may make all the difference to a sexually
premature boy. Although I have been engaged for years in the collection
of facts bearing on this question of homosexuality, I have recently been
astonished to learn, in an ever-increasing number of cases, how adult
homosexuals, men of thirty years and upwards, form homosexual
relationships with schoolboys, and regard their right to do this as
practically self-evident. It is obvious that this is likely to do grave
moral injury to the boy--altogether apart from the fact that the
production of homosexuality is thereby greatly facilitated, however much
interested ho