enth month, nor _quite_ so good under the third.

3. When the parent or some trusty and confidential friend can, without
the aid of interested spies and emissaries, have an eye to the general
treatment, and especially to the moral management, it should be done;
for even the best nurses may so differ in their principles, manners and
habits from the parent, that the latter would deem it preferable to
withdraw the child, and resort at once to feeding.

SEC. 7. _From Teething to Weaning._

This period will, of course, be longer or shorter according as the teeth
begin to appear earlier or later, and according to the time when it is
thought proper to wean.

On few points, perhaps, has there existed a greater diversity of opinion
than in regard to the age most proper for weaning. The limits of this
work do not permit a thorough discussion of the question; and I shall
therefore be very brief in my remarks on the subject.

Dr. Cullen, whose opinion on topics of this kind is certainly entitled
to much respect, thought that less than seven, or more than eleven
months of nursing was injurious. Yet in some countries, and even in some
parts of our own, the period is extended by the mother, from choice, to
two years. And although the milk is not so good after the thirteenth or
fourteenth month, I have never either known or heard that any evil
consequences followed from the practice.

Dr. Loudon, a recent writer, observes, that the period of nursing has a
great influence over the numbers of mankind in various countries, as is
evinced by numerous facts. He adduces proofs of this, position. Thus, he
says, in China, where the population is excessive, and the inhuman
practice of infanticide is common, they wean a child as soon as it can
put its hand to its mouth. On the other hand, the Indians of North
America do not wean their children until they are old and strong enough
to run about: generally they are suckled for a period of more than two
years.

He then enters into a physiological inquiry why it is that British
mothers do not usually suckle their children longer than ten months. He
seems--though he does not give us his precise opinion--to think that, in
all ordinary cases, the period of nursing ought to be protracted to two
or three years, and that perhaps it would be better still to extend it
to four or five. His remarks are so excellent, and withal so curious,
and their tendency so humane, that we venture to insert one or t