216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



prove that they were none the worse for an indiscriminate diet. 

 No one can say how many slight illnesses might have been avoid- 

 ed, or how many severe ones might have been insignificant, had the 

 child been in a perfectly wholesome state of body, which can only 

 result when it has lived on proper food. Good blood can only be 

 obtained by good food, while weakly or even diseased constitu- 

 tions may be greatly amended by simple attention to diet. 



How little does the ordinary young mother know of her child's 

 requirements ! The first baby is generally subjected to a terrible 

 number of experiments : the mother, perhaps, gives it a new food 

 merely because Mrs. So-and-so's baby takes it, having no notion 

 as to whether it is suitable for her own infant's digestion. 



I shall now turn to the important subject of clothing. The 

 first object of clothes (at any rate in such a climate as ours) is to 

 keep the body from being chilled during our incessant variations 

 of temperature, and it is well to remark that the prevention of 

 chill has nothing to do with "coddling," which is keeping the 

 body needlessly warm merely because warmth is pleasant. Clothes 

 should be light, and of woolen material, and should in no way im- 

 pede free movement. 



It may seem superfluous to state facts which are no doubt obvi- 

 ous to every one, but it is not of common occurrence to see a child 

 dressed in a reasonable manner, especially when it is very young. 

 Although I own that children are now more sensibly clothed than 

 was the case thirty years ago, it is still common to see an infant, 

 who can take no exercise to warm himself, wearing a low-necked, 

 short-sleeved, short-coated dress in the coldest weather. The two 

 parts of the body viz., the upper portion of the chest and the 

 lower portion of the abdomen which it is most important to keep 

 from variations of temperature, are exposed, and the child is ren- 

 dered liable to colds, coughs, and lung diseases on the one hand, 

 and bowel complaint on the other. What little there is of the 

 dress is chiefly composed of open work and embroidery, so that 

 there is about as much warmth in it as in a wire sieve, and the 

 socks accompanying such a dress are of cold white cotton, expos- 

 ing a cruel length of blue and red leg. I can not see the beauty 

 of a pair of livid blue legs, and would much rather behold them 

 comfortably clad in a pair of stockings. If the beauty lie in the 

 shape of the leg, that shape will be displayed to as much advan- 

 tage in a pair of stockings ; if it lie in the coloring of the flesh, 

 beautiful coloring will not be obtained by leaving the leg bare ; 

 and from the artistic point of view, a blue or red stocking is infi- 

 nitely preferable to a blue and red leg. 



There is a comfortable supposition that children do not feel 

 cold so much as grown-up persons, but this is not true. It is a 

 fact that not only has a child less power of generating heat than 



