ccurrences.

INCREDIBLE NUMBERS.

Some books speak of seven, eight, nine, ten, and more, children at a
birth. But these statements are so marvelous, so incredible, and
unsupported by proper testimony, that they do not merit any degree of
confidence. The climax of such extraordinary assertions is reached, and
a good illustration of the credulity of the seventeenth century
furnished, by a writer named Goftr. This traveller, in 1630, saw a
tablet in a church at Leusdown (Lausdunum), about five miles from the
Hague, with an inscription stating that a certain illustrious countess,
whose name and family he records, brought forth at one birth, in the
fortieth year of her age, in the year 1276, 365 infants. They were all
baptized by Guido, the Suffragan. The males were called John, and the
females Elizabeth. They all, with their mother, died on the same day,
and were buried in the above-mentioned church. This monstrous birth was
said to have been caused by the sin of the countess in insulting a poor
woman with twins in her arms, who prayed that her insulter might have at
one birth the same number of children as there were days in the year. Of
course, notwithstanding the story being attested by a tablet in a
church, it must be placed among the many other instances of superstition
afforded by an ignorant and credulous era.

We may remark, in closing this subject, that fewer plural births come to
maturity than pregnancies with single children. Miscarriages are
comparatively more frequent in such pregnancies than in ordinary ones.

PREGNANCY

_VENERATION FOR THE PREGNANT._

We have been considering woman hitherto as maiden and wife. She now
approaches the sacred threshold of maternity. She is with child. In no
period of her life is she the subject of an interest so profound and
general. The young virgin and the new wife have pleased by their grace,
spirit, and beauty. The pregnant wife is an object of active benevolence
and religious respect. It is interesting to note how, at all times and
in all countries, she has been treated with considerate kindness and
great deference. She has been made the subject of public veneration, and
sometimes even of religious worship. At Athens and at Carthage the
murderer escaped from the sword of justice if he sought refuge in the
house of a pregnant woman. The Jews allowed her to eat forbidden meats.
The laws of Moses pronounced the penalty of death against all those who
by bad tre