The so-called "Twilight Sleep," a modern development, by which the pangs of childbirth are obviated by the administration of drugs or by hypnotic suggestion, has its opponents and defenders. The advantage of a painless childbirth, upon which the mother can look back as on a dream, is evident. The "Twilight Sleep" process has been used with the happiest results both for parent and child. Opponents of this system declare that the use of powerful drugs may injure the child. A method commended is the administration of a mixture of laughing gas and oxygen, which relieves the mother and does not affect the child. THE NEW-BORN INFANT The average weight of the new-born child is about seven and a half pounds. It is insensitive to pain for the first few days, and seems deaf (since its middle ears are filled with a thick mucus) for the first two weeks. During the first few days, too, it does not seem able to see. The first month of its existence is purely automatic. Evidences of dawning intelligence appear in the second month and at four months it will recognize mother or nurse. Muscularly it is poorly developed. Not until two months old is it able to hold up its head, and not until three months does voluntary muscular movement put in an appearance. The new-born's first self-conscious act is to draw breath. Deprived of its usual means of supply it must breathe or suffocate. Its next is to suck milk, lest it starve. HEREDITY We often find children who offer a striking resemblance to a paternal grandfather, a maternal aunt or a maternal great-grandmother. This is known as atavism. There are many curious variations with regard to the inheritance of ancestral traits. Some children show a remarkable resemblance to their fathers in childhood, others to their mothers. And many qualities of certain individual ancestors appear quite suddenly late in life. Everything may be inherited, from the most delicate shadings of the disposition, the intelligence and the will power, to the least details of hair, nails and bone structure, etc. And the combination of the qualities of one's ancestors in heredity is so manifold and so unequal that it is extremely difficult to arrive at fixed conclusions regarding it. Hereditary traits and tendencies are developed out of the energies of the original conjugated germ-cells throughout life, up to the very day of death. Even aged men often show peculiarities in the evening of their life which may be clearly recognized as inherited, and duplicating others shown by their forbears at the same period of life. As has already been mentioned every individual inherits, generally speaking, as much from his paternal as from his maternal progenitors. This in spite of the fact that the tiny paternal germ-cell is the only medium of transmission of the paternal qualities, while the mother furnishes the much larger egg-cell, and feeds him throughout the embryonic period.