child’s face. [Sidenote: Clothing of children.] It is strange to learn in how many lands the mothers feel that they must wrap and tie and bind and swathe their babies until they are deprived of all power of motion, and lives and health are sadly endangered by too much rather than too little clothing. The Chinese mother dresses her baby in a tiny wadded jacket, then another, then another, saying perhaps, “It is five jackets cold to-day.” He is wrapped and tied up until the bundle with a baby at the centre can be rolled on the floor without hurting him, or may perchance act as a life-preserver if he falls off the houseboat into the canal. It is pretty sure to keep afloat until it can be pulled in with a boat hook. [Illustration: A PERSIAN BABY IN HIS CRADLE] Very differently clad are the “Coral Island Brownies” or the babies of Africa, who are not hampered with any clothes at all, and as they grow older simply wear a fringe of grass or a strip of calico about their waists. It is easy to trace many of the cases of terrible eye disease among children in Egypt, Syria, and other warm countries to the utter lack of any protection to the eyes from the glaring sunlight. Often boat women are seen rowing in the bright sunlight in China with babies asleep on their backs, and nothing over the sensitive little eyes as their heads bob up and down in time with the oars. It is often a great shock to the American missionary mother to see little heads wrapped and swathed in numerous cloths and kerchiefs, while the little feet are blue with cold. But then, the shock is reciprocal, and, while the mother is off conducting a meeting, her nurse is carefully making up for her negligence by wrapping up the head of the missionary baby until he is bathed in perspiration! [Sidenote: Infant mortality.] The study of Infant Mortality is now engrossing the thought and attention of many earnest men and women. It is most difficult to get vital statistics from any non-Christian lands in order to give comparative tables. In comparing the mortality statistics of the United States for 1890 and 1909 we find marked improvement in the “opportunity for life and health” granted to American children. If George B. Mangold is right in saying that “the infant and child mortality of a people is a barometer of their social progress,” then we have reason to believe that our land is making real advance in this respect. In 1890 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 307,562; in 1909 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 196,534. From the first mortality table of the principal cities of the world in 1912 that has been made public we learn that-- Stockholm has 82 deaths per 1,000 births. London „ 90 „ „ „ „ New York „ 105 „ „ „ „ Contrast with these figures the following, based upon careful study and research by high authorities:--