body, and particularly
the other endocrines, in touch with the necessities of the adventures
of these ova. It is thus enabled to bend every force and power at its
command to the service of the reproductive instinct.

In learning their role so well in the course of evolution, the
thyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispensable
stimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to the
primary function of the ovary. As a consequence, to hold the sex
stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restraining
them and so preventing sex precocity. These are the thymus and pineal.
So closely are they all related that insufficient action of the
thyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause atrophy of the ovaries
and uterus, with abolition of genital function. If the sex glands
themselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in the
forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal association must readjust
itself to the new development. The adaptation evokes the phenomena of
the transition to a new life, the climacteric.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBERTY

Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of events
in a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as it
were, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty they awaken. And with them
all those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do with
their nutrition up to ripening. Then revolve the cycles that are
translated as menstruation, the propulsion, fertilization and
implantation of the ova in the uterus,--the full development of the
fetus,--its birth, and feeding after birth--all of which are ductless
gland controlled.

Samuel Butler once noted that:

"All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life,
are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. They
are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms
are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection,
education, increased intelligence and multiplication of the
spermatozoa, so that our whole life is in reality a series of complex
efforts in respect of these, conscious or unconscious according
to their comparative commonness. They are the central fact in our
existence, the point towards which all effort is directed."

Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she carries.
All that transpires during pubescence is symptomatic of the underlying
tidal stir in the cells. The uterus becomes