In many instances, and particularly if the infant is under six months of age, and where he has had to have additional feeding from the bottle--under such circumstances the breast milk may be continued as "partial feeding," at least until the baby has reached his ninth or tenth month, at which time it may be wholly discontinued. At each nursing time the baby empties both breasts, and the amount he draws may readily be estimated by carefully weighing him before and after each nursing. By referring to the directions in a previous chapter, the quantity of food needed for his size and age may be determined; while the deficit is made up from a bottle of milk containing properly modified cow's milk. If the mother's health admits, or if the breasts continue to secrete a partial meal for the babe, mixed feeding should be continued until after the ninth or tenth month, when it can gradually be reduced from four or five times each day to once or twice a day, until it is finally omitted altogether. In the meantime, the baby is gradually getting stronger food and at eleven or twelve months the little fellow is able to subsist and thrive upon whole milk. INFANT FEEDING PUZZLES It is very difficult to explain how some babies thrive on some certain food while others grow thin and speedily go into a decline on the same regime. The hereditary tendencies and predispositions undoubtedly have a great deal to do with such puzzling cases. Again, sometimes a slight variation in technic or some other trifling error in connection with the preparation of the baby's food, may be more or less responsible for the variation in the results obtained. No two mothers will prepare food exactly alike even when both are following the same printed directions and these slight discrepancies are enough to upset some delicately balanced baby. On the other hand, some babies are born with such strong digestive powers and such a powerful constitution that they are easily able to survive almost any and all blunders as regards artificial feeding, while at the same time they also manifest the ability to surmount a score of other obstacles which the combined ignorance and carelessness of their parents or caretakers unknowingly place in the pathway of early life which these little folks must tread. The fact that so many babies do so well on such unscientific feeding only serves to demonstrate the old law of "the survival of the fittest"--they are born in the world with an enormous endowment of "survival qualities"--and in many cases the little fellows thrive and grow no matter how atrociously they are fed. There may be other factors in the explanation of why some babies do so well on such poor care, but heredity is the chief explanation, while adaptation is the other. If the little fellows can survive for a few weeks or a few months, the human machine possesses marvelous powers of adaptation, and we find here the explanation why many a neglected baby pulls through. INFANT FOODS