CUSTOMS AT BIRTII.

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The babies in Prussia are usually handed over as soon asborn to the tender mercies of a Saug-amme (suckling nurse),for German women are far too selfish to allow thcmselves tobe troubled with tbe suckling of their own offspring; andthough this wretched custom prevails among our own fineladies to a greater extent tban is creditable to us as a nation,still we are glad to say, that our middle-class wives have,as yet, sufficient natural feeling left to nurse their infantsthemselves.

In Germany, however, it is far diflferent.

"What! does your aunt suckle her own child?" said aGerman maid to our little girl. " Why, the poorest lady inGermany would think it a disgrace !"

In Rhineland, almost nine out of every ten women, if theybe only sufficiently well-to-do to afford the " luxury," hiresome deputy-mother for their little ones, and seem to regardthe funetion which is, perhaps, in all the economy of nature,the most wondrous provision of the Almighty's loving-kind-ness (making, as it does, the very food of the child springinto existence at the same moment as itself), as a cruel tax,instead of a high benevolence, in connexion with a mother'sduties. So that all the fine development of affection whichhas been ordained to be associated with the sustenance of thelittle one, is reduced to a sad waste of social machinery forbinding being to being.

Verily, too, there is in the creation of this same mother'smilk so much of love and wisdom comprised, that it seoms tous to be absolutely impious in a woman to refuse to make useof it. Even chemically considered, it is the most exquisitenutriment that human imamnation can coneeive, containino;as it does every dement of the body—bones, muscles, andnerves — in the best possible form for being assimilated:whilst, morally considered, it is a source of such strong