“En Amérique, en Corse, et chez l’Ibérien, En France même encor chez le Vénarnien, Au pays Navarrois, lorsqu’une femme accouche, L’épouse sort du lit et le mari se couche; Et, quoiqu’il soit très sain et d’esprit et de corps, Contre un mal qu’il n’a point l’art unit ses efforts. On le met au régime, et notre faux malade, Soigné par l’accouchée, en son lit fait _couvade_: On ferme avec grand soin portes, volets, rideaux; Immobile, on l’oblige à rester sur le dos, Pour étouffer son lait, qui gêné dans sa course, Pourrait en l’étouffant remonter vers sa source. Un mari, dans sa couche, au médecin soumis, Reçoit, en cet état, parents, voisins, amis, Qui viennent l’exhorter à prendre patience Et font des vœux au ciel pour sa convalescence.” Professor Vinson, who is an authority on the subject, comes to the conclusion that it is not possible to ascribe to the Basques the custom of the _couvade_. Mr. Tylor writes to me that he “did not quite begin the use of this good French word in the sense of the ‘man-child-bed’ as they call it in Germany. It occurs in Rochefort, _Iles Antilles_, and though Dr. Murray, of the English Dictionary, maintains that it is spurious, if so, it is better than any genuine word I know of.”—H. C.] “In certain valleys of Biscay,” says Francisque-Michel, “in which the popular usages carry us back to the infancy of society, the woman immediately after her delivery gets up and attends to the cares of the household, whilst the husband takes to bed with the tender fledgeling in his arms, and so receives the compliments of his neighbours.” The nearest people to the Zardandan of whom I find this custom elsewhere recorded, is one called _Langszi_,[2] a small tribe of aborigines in the department of Wei-ning, in Kweichau, but close to the border of Yun-nan: “Their manners and customs are very extraordinary. For example, when the wife has given birth to a child, the husband remains in the house and holds it in his arms for a whole month, not once going out of doors. The wife in the mean time does all the work in doors and out, and provides and serves up both food and drink for the husband, she only giving suck to the child.” I am informed also that, among the Miris on the Upper Assam border, the husband on such occasions confines himself strictly to the house for forty days after the event.