The intimate connection which exists between birth interval and suckling and the great importance which suckling has under the favourable influence of a long birth interval is shown in Dr. Agnes Bluhm's Figures C 60, C 61, and C 62--+infant nutrition (breast feeding), number of children and infant mortality+, after Dr. Marie Baum. "The material is taken from the towns of Gladbach, Rheydt, Odenkirchen and, Rheindalen, and comprises 1,495, mostly poor families, with 9,393 cases in which the mother survived childbirth and 9,487 children born alive. In this table only 7,983 children were counted, because the remainder had not reached the age of one year on the day of counting. Of these 7,983, there died before the completion of the first year 1,276, or 15.98%." +Number of children and child mortality+: Bluhm adds:--"Figure 1 shows in Curve A the +influence of the duration of breast feeding+; in Curve B +influence of numerical position of birth on the mortality of the infant+. The very divergent course of the two curves expresses the very different influence of both these factors on mortality; the latter is almost exclusively dependent upon the length of suckling, and shows corresponding with its increase a continuous and steep decline down to 1.46% from a maximum number of 35%. The very slight increase of the mortality of children suckled for six weeks compared with those who have not been breast fed at all is immaterial (35.55% against 35.28%). These figures prove only that breast feeding up to six weeks does not give the child any protection against fatal diseases. The influence of the birth number hardly makes itself felt up to the seventh child, only from the eighth onwards the power of resistance decreases continuously but not nearly to the same degree in which it grows with the length of breast-feeding (greatest difference only 21%). Curve B shows a materially different course from that of similar curves by other authors, for instance--from Geissler's well-known curve, dealing with Saxon miners, in which not only the first born show up less favourably than the second and third born, but in which, from the fourth child on, the mortality increases rapidly. The economical condition of both groups being similar (85% of Baum's families had a maximum yearly income of £75), it is highly probable that the difference in the curves arises from different methods of infant feeding. In the Rhine provinces, as is also proved by Baum's figures, the feeding is good; in Saxony, however, it is notoriously bad. The co-relation of infant mortality with infant feeding is very clearly illustrated in Figures 2 and 3, the former shows the +influence of the length of suckling on the mortality of the children classed in order of birth+, the latter +the influence of the order of birth in connection with different lengthed periods of suckling+. The extraordinarily regular course of all the nine curves in Figure 2 and the extremely irregular course of the six top