When a child is five or six months old, it is best to begin to feed once or twice a day, so that the weaning may not be too suddenly enforced upon it. Bread, crumbled in a small quantity of milk, corn-meal pudding, mutton or chicken broth, Graham biscuit; very little salt added to the porridges is healthy. But no disagreeable substances, such as aloes, pepper or salt, should be applied to the nipples for the purpose of weaning a child; a plaster of wool or fur is more safe for the health of the child. In this climate (Massachusetts) there are many families who fear to wean their children at any season of the year; many of them migrating from a climate less variable, and in which the customs of feeding infants are altogether different. Such mothers are deserving of no small share of sympathy. I am acquainted with hundreds of them; thank God there are some good mothers, good enough to take the blame upon themselves should their infants sicken and die after being weaned. But for all such there may be found in this little cabinet a consoling word. Weaning is advisable before June and before December. But if a child does not thrive by reason of some constitutional weakness of the mother, it could probably rally faster by being fed otherwise, at any season of the year. But whether a child is weakly or not it can gain nothing by continuing to suck after the ninth month; therefore, weaning is recommended about this period. If the mother breeds fast, a prolonged season of nursing but keeps her unprepared, both in strength and household matters, for the next. Then, too, it retards the healthy development of the new being, should she become pregnant while nursing. Although the mother’s milk is essential to the proper growth of the child, history records evidences of noble-minded men and women who never nursed the breast, yet lived to a great age. A great deal depends upon circumstances; for instance, it may be that even with apparently nutritive milk, the bones remain soft, the joints weak, and the flesh wastes away or remains the same. Such cases are not uncommon, especially among the very hard-working people or real indigent. Hence the necessity of seeking medical advice as to the best possible means of supplying the blood with those principles apparently lacking. From my experience as nurse, I can say that weaning from the breast may be successfully accomplished if begun pleasantly, but decidedly, and continued. The months of May and October in the New England States are the most favorable; April and November in the Middle States, while in almost all of the Southern States weaning is advisable in March and November or December. Waiting for a child to get all of its teeth is merely a matter of choice. Beside the inconvenience of the differences in the periods of time when the teeth get through, there is an unnecessary drain on the system of the mother, with no benefit whatever to the child.