The mother gazes down at it in vague, awkward, speechless misery.

It is not a sight one can ever forget.
It is France that is taking the lead in the initiation of the scientific and practical movements for the care of the young child before and after birth, and it is in France that we may find the germs of nearly all the methods now becoming adopted for arresting infantile mortality.

The village system of Villiers-le-Duc, near Dijon in the Cote d'Or, has proved a germ of this fruitful kind.

Here every pregnant woman not able to secure the right conditions for her own life and that of the child she is bearing, is able to claim the assistance of the village authorities; she is entitled, without payment, to the attendance of a doctor and midwife and to one franc a day during her confinement.

The measures adopted in this village have practically abolished both maternal and infantile mortality.