then, is to be done for these unfortunate foundlings? No Asylum
can afford to board and employ one wet-nurse for each infant. How can
the children be saved at a moderate expense? The feasible and
practicable course for this object is the

"PLACING-OUT SYSTEM."

This plan has been in operation in France for centuries, and is now
carried out under a public department called _"Les services des Enfants
Assistes"_ recently under the direction of M. Husson, and known
generally as the Bureau Ste. Apolline. This bureau deals with the whole
class of abandoned and outcast and destitute infants. Instead of keeping
these children in an Asylum, this office at once dispatches them to
nurses already selected in the country.

The whole matter is thoroughly organized; there are agents to forward
the nurses and children, inspectors to select nurses and look after the
infants and take charge of the disbursements, and medical officers to
investigate the condition of both children and nurses, and to visit them
monthly, and give medical attendance. The nurse is obliged to bring a
certificate of good character from the Commune, and of her being in
proper condition to take care of a foster-child. She is not permitted to
take charge of an infant unless her own is nine months old, and has been
weaned. The nurse is bound to send her foster-child, as she grows up, to
school, and to some place of religious instruction. The bureau has thus
relieved a great number of children during ten years, from 1855 to 1864,
the total number amounting to 21,944.

That it has been wonderfully successful is shown by the mortality, which
is now only about thirty per cent., or nearly the same with the general
death-rate among young children in New York. Under this new poor-law
administration for destitute and abandoned children, the famous Hospital
for Foundlings has been changed into a mere depot for children sent to
places and nurses in the country, with the most happy results in point
of mortality. Thus, in 1838, the hospital admitted 5,322 children, and
lost 1,211; in 1868, of 5,603 admitted, only 442 died, or about eight
per cent. Of 21,147 sent to the country, the deaths were only 1,783, or
less than ten per cent Of 6,009 admitted in 1869, 4,260 were abandoned
children, and the deaths from the above number were 495.

The French administration does not cease with paying the board of these
foundlings in their country homes; it looks