A YEAR'S BABIES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2264, 26 October 1889, Page 3

A YEAR'S BABIES

It has been computed that between 36,000,000 and 37,000,000 of bablts are bora into the world each year, And it will probably startle a good many persons to find, on the authority of a writer ln the Hospital, that could tbe Infants of a year be ranged ln a Hue In oradles seven deep they would go round the globe . W e bave the Ingenious conclusion alao tbat, sup* posing the Uttle ones to grow up aud the «exes to be about equally divided, we cfaould have an army a hundred times as large as the forces of tbe British Empire, •wiih a wife ln addition to every soldier. The same writer looks at the matter ln 111 _ •till more plotureilque light. He Imagines the babies carted paßt a given point m their mothers' oharge one by one and the procession being kept np continuously nlgbfc and day until the last comer m tho twelvemonth has passed by. A sufficiently liberal rate of speed Is allowed j bnt even with these b*bles In arms going past 20 a minute tbe reviewing officer would only have seen a •Lath park of the infantile boat fie onward bf the time he had been a year .t hla post. In other words, the babe tha,-. had to be carried when the work began would be able to waddle onward itself when a mere fraction of Ita comrades had reaohed 4he saluting post, and when the year's •apply °f babies was tapering to a olose there would be a rear guard, not of Infants, bnt of romping boys and girls. They would have passed, m fsot. ont of the maternal arms into tbe bauds of the •obool tesober. Every moment of nearly •even yeara would be required to oomplete this grand parade of those little ones that tn the oourse of a twelvemonth begin to play their part m th. first age of man.