This should take place when the child is about twelve months of age--sometimes a few months earlier, often a few later. If the mother's health be good, and her milk abundant, it may be deferred until the canine teeth appear--between the fifteenth and twentieth month. The child will then have sixteen teeth with which it can properly masticate soft solid food. _Time of the year for._--The infant should not be taken from the breast during or immediately preceding warm weather. If the mother, either on account of sickness or failure in her breast-milk, is obliged during the summer to give up nursing, she should at once procure a wet-nurse. If she cannot, the child must be sent into the country. To wean an infant in the city in hot weather, is to expose it to almost certain death. _Proper method._--The process of weaning should be a very slow one. No definite day should be fixed for it. Little by little, from week to week, the amount of spoon-food is to be increased and the nursing lessened--being first given up at night. The breast should never be suddenly denied to a child unaccustomed to artificial food, but be displaced by degrees, by the bottle and the spoon. This gradual change will neither fret the child nor annoy the mother, as sudden weaning always does. The infant may begin to be accustomed to artificial food at the age of four months. At first, only diluted cow's milk should be given it occasionally between the times of nursing. In a tumbler one-third full of water dissolve a tea-spoonful of sugar of milk; add to the sweetened water an equal quantity of fresh cow's milk; then, if the child's stools are at all green, mix with this two tea-spoonfuls of lime water. Instead of pure water, barley-water made in the usual way, and boiled to the consistency of milk, may be employed in this preparation--being added, while still warm, to an equal amount of milk. Or, toast-water may be substituted as a diluter of the milk. Cow's milk should not be boiled, if it can be preserved in any other way. As the infant advances in months, some solid food may be allowed. After six months, pap, made with stale bread and tops and bottoms, is proper once or twice a day. Beef-tea, made according to the recipe we have given, and chicken, lamb, or mutton broth, may now also be occasionally taken. As the quantity of milk diminishes towards the close of the first year, the spoon-food should be resorted to more frequently to supply the want. Solid food ought not to be given before the child is a year old.