Quatrefoil

“ Jane E. also asserts that the ages at first were 9, 6, 3: then she calculates the present ages, leaving the second occasion unnoticed. Old Hen is nearly as bad; she "tried various numbers till I found one that fitted all the conditions"; but merely scratching up the earth, and pecking about, is not the way to solve a problem, oh venerable bird! And close after Old Hen prowls, with hungry eyes, Old Cat, who calmly assumes, to begin with, that the son who comes of age is the eldest. ”

“ He flew down to a snug corner behind a tall brick chimney looking to the south, where his wife was sitting on a nest with four eggs in it.
“My dear,” he said; “you mustn’t leave the nest to-day; you know my hopes and wishes; you will disappoint me dreadfully if you can’t manage to hatch out an egg to-morrow. It really is our duty, as we live in a palace, to have a nestling hatched on the Jubilee day. Why, my people have lived here ever since the Queen came to the throne, and one of my ancestors was born on the very day of her accession! ”

“ It must be recollected that, during our narrative, "Time has rolled his ceaseless course," and season has succeeded season, until the infant, in its utter helplessness to lift its little hands for succour, has sprung up into a fair blue-eyed little maiden of nearly eight years old, light as a fairy in her proportions, bounding as a fawn in her gait ”

“ Can we help suspecting a period, somewhere in the remote ages, when the baby’s ancestry dwelt amid the treetops, and learned to stand by balancing on one branch while they held by a higher one? when they edged along the branch, holding on above, but dropped to all-fours and crept when they came to the ground now and then to get from tree to tree? The whole history of the baby’s movements points to this: the strong arms and clinging hands, from birth; the intense impulse to pull up, even from the beginning of sitting; the way in which standing always begins, by laying hold above and pulling up ”

“ A common form of simulation for the purpose of obtaining children is found in the custom of putting a boy to sit on the bride’s lap at a wedding. The ceremony was usual among the ancient Aryans, and is prescribed in detail in the Âpastamba.178.2 It is still followed in the east of Europe and elsewhere. In England, to rock an empty cradle is to rock a new baby into it. The Bechuana, Basuto and Agni women carry dolls, which they treat like children.178.3 And in China a barren {179} woman adopts a little girl to produce conception—a practice for which an elaborate reason is assigned. ”

“ Is my Roe well?
I’ll come back twice and then farewell.’
The nurse made no answer, but as soon as the Queen had disappeared she went to the King and told him all. The King exclaimed, ‘Good heavens! what do you say? I will watch myself to-night by the child’s bed.’
When the evening came he went to the nursery, and at midnight the Queen appeared and said:
‘Is my child well? Is my Roe well?
I’ll come back twice and then farewell.’
And she nursed and petted the child as usual before she disappeared. ”

“ Knocking off the infant again for the sake of uniformity, you will perceive that the fourteen sheep would be one sheep each for every member of this family, including the mother, to whom we gave half the rolls and flour in the former case, and there still remains (to say nothing of the entire bullock for the baby of three weeks, which no one will deny to be sufficient) a large quantity of lights, et cetera, for the cat or dog, if there should be such a wilful extravagance in the family. ”

“ Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is adorned with flowers, ribbons, and a woman's apron. In East Prussia, at the rye or wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf, “You are getting the Old Grandmother.” In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg the men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf, called the Grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year, but his or her spouse will be old; if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a man gets it, he will marry an old crone. ”

“ Paul and his foal rode on half the afternoon, and then the foal said, "Look back, what can you see?" "I see the eagle again," said Paul, "but now the flame is twice seven fathoms long; he flies very quickly." "Let's turn over again," said the foal, "and I will become a lamb and you will be the shepherd, and if my father ask you if you have seen the travellers say yes, you saw them when the lamb was born." ”

“ THE event of the week, from a Tamil point of view, is the midday Sunday service; so we take care of the nurseries during that hour, and send all grown-up life to church. In the Prémalia nursery the babies range from a few days old to eighteen months, and sometimes two years. There is a baby for every mood, as one beloved of the babies says; and the babies seem to know it. We have a lively time there on Sundays; for by noon the morning sleep is over, and nineteen or twenty babies are waking up one after the other or all together. And most of them want something, and want it at once. ”

“ The journey of the prince and the struggle for the three hairs gives the bulk of the popular fairy stories which differ according as the journey or the struggle is the most elaborated; in the Three Citrons the journey, in the Sun-horse the struggle, is the part most carefully worked out. The struggle for the three hairs isolated has perhaps, on drifting south, transformed into the midsummer fairy stories of which Jezinky and the Wood Woman (Czech) are among the most beautiful instances. ”

“ THE BIG CAT-BASKET.
One was her first birthday celebration. It was not like any that any other little baby ever had. Little Mary Ellen had a birthday when she was six months old!
The youngest of the four great-grandmothers, Mrs. Persis, was talking one day with Madam Esther, the next-to-the-oldest great-grandmother. “It is time Nan’s baby had some kind of a celebration,” said she. “Why not let her have a birthday the day she is six months old?”
“Who ever heard of such a thing!” Madam Esther gasped.
“Why, we have!” laughed Grandmother Lee, Mary Ellen’s father’s mother. ”

“ Memory and Design Clergymen and Chickens
[Extract from a lecture On Memory as a Key to the Phenomena of Heredity delivered by Butler at the Working Men’s College, Great Ormond Street, on Saturday, 2nd December, 1882.]
Why, let me ask, should a hen lay an egg which egg can become a chicken in about three weeks and a full-grown hen in less than a twelvemonth, while a clergyman and his wife lay no eggs but give birth to a baby which will take three-and-twenty years before it can become another clergyman? Why should not chickens be born and clergymen be laid and hatched? ”

“ When he had run after the foals for a long, long time and was hot and tired, he passed by a cleft in the rock where an old woman was sitting spinning with a distaff, and she called to him:
'Come hither, come hither, my handsome son, and let me comb your hair.'
The youth liked the thought of this, let the foals run where they chose, and seated himself in the cleft of the rock by the side of the old hag. So there he sat with his head on her lap, taking his ease the livelong day. ”

“ And then, if at the end of the quartet, as I fear will be the case—for we must face the worst, darling, we must face the worst—if at the end of the quartet it seems clear to brother Eustace, and the three assessor physiologists from the neighbouring phalansteries, that the dear child would be a cripple for life, we're still allowed four decades more to prepare ourselves in: four whole decades more, Olive, to take our leave of the darling baby. You'll have your baby with you for eighty days. ”

“ Go your way therefore, and when you are near your own kingdom, stop at the first fountain you come to and cut a citron. Then a fairy will come forth from it, and will say to you, 'Give me to drink!' Mind and be ready with the water, or she will vanish like quicksilver. But if you are not quick enough with the second fairy, have your eyes open and be watchful that the third does not escape you, giving her quickly to drink, and you shall have a wife after your own heart. ”

“ We have said that this family would be composed of the male head and his wives, the latter consisting of captured females, and further, let us note, of his own adult female offspring, accompanied by a troop of infants of both sexes. The absence of male offspring beyond those of tender years would be another most notable phenomenon. These sons would, as we have seen, have been banished at puberty from the herd, in common with the habit of most animals. ”

“ At last a cry is raised that the child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation of swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, and it is carried joyfully to the barn, lest it catch cold in the open air.1153 In other parts of North Germany, the last sheaf, or the puppet made out of it, is called the Child, the Harvest Child, etc. In the North of England the last handful of corn was cut by the prettiest girl and dressed up as the Corn Baby or Kern Baby ”

“ You are puzzled about a fourth generation. Since our generation is thirty Earth years, I would have to be about 150 years old to have a fourth generation grandchild. I am now 175 years old, and Xora is now twenty-six Earth years old, which makes her my fourth generation grandchild. Xora has been appointed as your guide; she will take you tomorrow to her home, where you will meet her family and friends. You will be free to mingle among and closely observe us. You will find out for yourself that we have high standards and happy life. ”

“ When the queen's children were born, a son with a sun on his forehead and a daughter with a moon on her brow, as she had promised, the envious sisters bribed the nurse to put little dogs in the place of the queen's children, and sent word to the king that his wife had given birth to two puppies. ”

“ In other species, on the contrary, such as the dog, the rabbit, the guinea-pig, etc., where several broods of young are produced during the year, or where, as in the human subject, the generative epochs of the female recur at short intervals, so that the particular period of impregnation is comparatively indefinite, the generative apparatus of the male is almost always in a state of full development; and is excited to action at particular periods, apparently by some influence derived from the condition of the female. ”

“ Considering that the parents of at least a few of them must have had an innate tendency to the increase of the power of reproduction at the beginning of summer, and considering, further, that this tendency must have been transmitted to some of the offspring, like many other characteristics which occur periodically at certain seasons,173 we can readily understand that gradually, through the influence of natural selection, a race would emerge whose pairing time would be exclusively or predominantly restricted to the season most favourable to its subsistence. ”

“ In the matter of breeding, the period of service is from the vernal equinox to the solstice so that the foal may come at a suitable season, for they are supposed to be born on the tenth day of the twelfth month after the mare was stinted. Those which are born after the time are usually defective and unfit for use. ”

“ They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
“It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human being is about twenty-four years. ”

“ It has been a puzzle to decide which appeared first, the egg out of which the fowl was hatched, or the hen which laid the egg; and it is an equal puzzle to the anthropologist to say whether man was first brought into existence as a babe or in maturity. ”

“ All the young fathers and mothers, with their little families, could not, at first, see the reason why. They had built nests, and their birdlings were just putting on their first coat of feathers, and their proud parents wanted to show them off in their varied colors and bright neck-sheen. In fact, every mother bird was sure that her fledglings were very accomplished young ones, and would certainly surprise the world when they made their début. ”

“ Occasionally Infant received a shock from the growth of young children. It was so astonishing to see a creature who was a baby but a short time ago, shooting aloft, long-armed and long-legged, and announcing itself in the teens. Such phenomena did not astonish Rilla, however. ”

“ It is by the study of heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For instance, experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the composition of the individual,83 and which is quite distinct from the capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for several years past, I have called respectively physical and psychical motherhood. ”