394 HISTORY OF 



kinds, the infant finds a temporary sustenance in 

 this superfluity, and does not expire till both are 

 exhausted. The circulation also being larger and 

 quicker, supplies it with proportionable warmth, 

 so that it is more capable of resisting the acci- 

 dental rigours of the weather. 



The first nourishment of infants is well known 

 to be the mother's milk ; and what is remarkable, 

 the infant has milk in its own breasts, which may 

 be squeezed out by compression : this nourish- 

 ment becomes less grateful as the child gathers 

 strength, and perhaps, also, more unwholesome. 

 However, in cold countries, which are unfavour- 

 able to propagation, and where the female has 

 seldom above three or four children at the most 

 during her life, she continues to suckle the child 

 for four or five years together. In this manner 

 the mothers of Canada and Greenland are often 

 seen suckling two or three children, of different 

 ages, at a time. 



The life of infants is very precarious till the 

 age of three or four, from which time it becomes 

 more secure ; and when a child arrives at its 

 seventh year, it is then considered as a more cer- 

 tain life, as M. Buffon asserts, than at any other 

 age whatever. It appears from Simpson's Tables, 

 that of a certain number of children born at the 

 same time, a fourth part are found dead at the 

 end of the first year ; more than one-third at the 

 end of the second ; and at least half at the end 

 of the third : so that those who live to be above 

 three years old, are indulged a longer term than 

 half the rest of their fellow-creatures. Never- 



