MARCH 237 



birth cries when it is laid down. That does not mean 

 that it is bad for the child to lie down, for, if it is quite 

 loosely dressed, this does it only good. It cries, as a 

 dog whines, merely to express, in the only way that it 

 can, what it wants ; and if taken up directly it cries, 

 this teaches it, by the only way it can learn, to do it 

 again next time. 



I saw some years ago a most intelligently managed 

 baby ; it was half German, half French. I was also 

 much struck with the superior cornmon- sense of many of 

 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 begin- 

 ning 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 di"y 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, 



