MARCH 233 



the arrangements in the foreign nursery that I visited, and 

 was told that they were the general custom in that part 

 of the world. All babies' cots from the very beginning are 

 firm, never rocking which must be better. And the little 

 mattress is made of hard, firm horsehair, not wool. On the 

 top of this is another mattress, made of strong linen, four or 

 five inches thick, loosely filled with husks. The pillow is 

 also loosely filled with the same material, viz. the husks 

 of oats, well dried and cleaned of all dust. The husks can 

 be got from a corn or forage merchant, and to thoroughly 

 clean them they should be washed in water, left to dry 

 for some days, then well shaken out in a thin muslin bag, 

 and also well aired. The reasons for this kind of pillow 

 are its cleanliness, and the fact that it is much cooler and 

 wholesomer than either wool, down, or feathers. In 

 Germany children sleep on a husk pillow till they are 

 seven or eight years old, and later in cases of illness. The 

 coolness of this pillow and mattress is particularly essential, 

 because the babies are never held in the arms of mother 

 or nurse except when they are being fed. This is an 

 important factor in the nursery management, especially 

 in houses without many servants, as it makes the nurse 

 or mother so much freer to do all that she has to do. 

 Small babies are far too much nursed as a rule in England ; 

 a child is trained from the first by the monthly nurse to 

 lie constantly on her knee, whereas abroad the first thing 

 done from the very beginning is to train a baby to be 

 perfectly content in its cot. And when the weather is fine 

 and it goes out, it is never carried or wheeled about before 

 it is seven or eight months old. It lies for hours in the 

 open air as in a bed. It is very important that children 

 of all ages should sleep on a hard flat bed, and that 

 mattresses should be re-made whenever they get hollow. 

 I believe that neglect of this is the cause of many round 

 shoulders and weak spines. A husk pillow (which can be 



