sible support, and to be ready instantly to give more if he
lose his balance. When this plan is followed, all the attitudes and
efforts of the child are in a natural direction; and success is attained
not only sooner, but more gracefully, than by any ill-judged support
given to one side.

'There is one very common mode of exercising infants, which we think
deserves particular notice: we mean the practice of hoisting or raising
them aloft in the air. This practice is of such venerable antiquity, and
so universal, that it would be vain to impugn it. The pleasure, too,
which most children evince under it, seems to show that it cannot be so
objectionable as a cursory observer would be disposed to consider it.
Still there are hazards which ought not to be overlooked. The risk of
accident is one of some amount: children have slipped from the hands,
and sustained serious injury. Some people are so energetic as to throw
up children and catch them in descending. This rashness there can be no
hesitation in reprobating; for, however confident the person may be of
not missing his hold, there must ever be risks of injury from the
concussion suffered in the descent, and even from the firmness of the
grasp necessary for recovering and maintaining the hold. The motion of
the body, too, has a direct tendency to induce vertigo; and when the
liability of the infant brain to congestion and its consequences is
considered, when the frequency of hydrocephalus in infants is borne in
mind, an exercise which impels blood to the brain will not be regarded
as wholly insignificant. There is one more objection which seems not to
have attracted attention. The hold taken of the child in the act of
hoisting him is by the hand grasping the chest. The fingers and thumb,
placed on each side of the breast-bone, compress the ribs; and any one
with the hand so placed will at once perceive that if the pressure were
strong, and the resistance from the elasticity of the ribs weak, the
impression on the chest resulting would correspond exactly with the
deformity named chicken-breast. That any force is ever used capable of
inducing speedily such a change, is in the highest degree improbable;
but that reiterated pressure of this kind, however slight, would in a
weakly child have power to impress and distort the chest, few, we
imagine, will doubt.'

LEARNING TO WALK.

When two or three months old, the infant may be placed on a soft
mattress upon the floor or o