_History of the Care of Foundlings._--For two reasons it is necessary that we should deal with the history of the care of foundlings. In the first place, it is a branch of child-protection which is rightly considered to be of great importance, and yet in regard to this branch the most erroneous views prevail alike among laymen and non-laymen. In the second place, the care of foundlings to-day cannot possibly be understood by those who know nothing of the history of the institution. Even during the time at which infanticide and the exposing of children were still legally permissible among the Romans, these practices were condemned by public opinion, especially when the excuse of great poverty was lacking, and they were regarded as a misuse of parental authority. This applies even more to infanticide than to the exposing of children; for in the case of the latter, it was always possible that the child would be rescued and brought up by a third person. The Church naturally regarded both infanticide and the exposing of children as immoral and sinful. But what could the Church do to prevent infanticide? Infanticide was largely a result of the fact that the Church and public opinion strongly condemned illegitimate sexual relationships; in actual fact, infanticide was usually the act of an unmarried mother. The only course open to the Church, if it wished to prevent infanticide, was to tolerate the exposure of children, and to take steps to ensure that the children thus exposed should not perish. The Church permitted the lesser evil in order to prevent the greater. According to some authorities, the priests even publicly exhorted fallen women to expose their children at the church doors. In many churches, marble basins were placed, in which children could be left. In many communities, it was the duty of the verger to take first charge of exposed children. Thus, the exposing of children on these lines became transformed into a kind of legitimate transference to another of the duty of maintaining a child. To expose a child in any other way was a punishable offence. Since those children that survived had to be brought up, the Church made provision for this also. Gradually institutions were founded, to which children were brought secretly, where they were received without restriction as to number, and where they were brought up. The institution of the turn-table dates from about the year 1200, and for many centuries thereafter was the general method for the secret reception of the children. The turn-table is a box, one side of which is left open, fixed in the outer wall of the foundling hospital, and rotating upon a vertical axis. Anyone wishing to leave a child at the institution has merely to pass the child through the opening on to the turn-table, and then to ring the bell adjacent to the turn-table. Someone within the institution thereupon rotates the table to receive the child, while the person who brought it can go away unseen.