However, if cow's milk is not easily digested by children, experience proves that there are other kinds of milk, from other animals, which young stomachs are able to bear more easily. There are many proofs of this fact. M. Tarnier, speaking before the Academy of Medicine on the artificial nourishment of the new born, reports that the milk of cows and goats, pure or diluted in different ways, that of condensed milk and Biedert's cream, have always given disastrous results at the Maternite in Paris, but that the mortality of the new born was considerably reduced from the day when ass's milk was introduced as food. Ass's milk was given pure for six weeks or two months; then cow's milk diluted with one-half water until six months old, followed by pure cow's milk. This is the most rational course of artificial feeding. Prof. Parrot reports analogous results obtained at the nursery opened at the Hospice des Enfants Assistes. By the aid of ass's milk he saved a number of the little syphilitics. The following are the numerical results: 86 infants with hereditary taint of syphilis have been at the nursery. Of 6 fed exclusively on cow's milk, only 1 survived and the other 5 died. Forty-two were suckled by goats, of which 8 lived, 34 are dead, which is equal to a mortality of 80.9 per cent. Thirty-eight were suckled by an ass, of which 28 lived and 10 died; a mortality of 26.3 per cent. Certainly these figures prove eloquently enough what chemical analysis shows, that ass's milk, being better borne by the infant's stomach, ought to have a composition resembling that of woman's milk. This analogy is not found to consist in the quantity of fat, but in the small amounts of dry residue (total solids) and of caseine. Let us now examine the objections raised by M. Meynet. Food has a considerable influence upon the composition of milk; this fact, stated by M. Riche in his treatise on chemistry, seem to be accepted by all. The milk of carnivoræ is excessively rich in caseine; that of herbivoræ much less. The food of woman, who enjoys a mixed alimentation, ought to have a composition intermediate between these two, and consequently ought to contain more caseine than that of the plant eaters. This is the logical deduction. At first this reasoning misleads one, but numerous objections present themselves. The food, no doubt, has some influence upon the composition of the milk of animals of the same species, but every animal can secrete something independent of any food, just as one kind secretes musk, another castor, etc. Yet it would not be an anomaly if an excess of caseine in proportion to the other substances was a true characteristic of ruminants. But we admit that the milk of all mammals ought to have identically the same composition if their food suffered no modifications.