Illegitimate children are in many places refused admission to the crèches. This refusal merits our strongest disapproval. The reasons alleged for this course are of two different kinds. First, we are told that we must not encourage girls to be immoral; secondly, it is said that married mothers will hesitate to entrust their children to a crèche which also receives illegitimate children. The injustice of this practice is more and more generally understood, and the better course more commonly prevails. Of course, only such illegitimate children should be received at a crèche as are cared for by their own mothers during the hours of the day when they are not at the institution. Illegitimate children boarded out with foster-parents should not be admitted to a crèche, because foster-parents who send to a crèche the child entrusted to their care are not properly fulfilling the duty they have undertaken, and those who cannot look after the foster-child themselves should not receive one at all. In most countries crèches are founded and maintained by private benevolence, and are merely supervised by the State. Only in a few countries--Hungary, for instance--has the State imposed upon the local authorities the duty of founding and maintaining such institutions; and the central authority has itself founded and maintained such institutions, and in these the matrons of the Public Homes for Children (_Kinderbewahranstalten_) receive their training. To-day various defects exist in these crèches. Not infrequently the attendants lack the necessary experience in the care of children, medical supervision is often inadequate, the building is unsuitable, the infants are artificially fed, the crèche is often too far from factory, workshop, or home, so that artificial feeding or feeding by a wet-nurse is encouraged. Before long crèches will become national institutions. They will become more numerous; they will be used more readily; their faults will be corrected.