Note 239 — XLI. SHELLEY. 1792–1822.

“See Mr. Newton’s Book [Return, to Nature. Cadell, 1811.] His children are the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive. The girls are perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions also are the most gentle and conciliating. The judicious treatment they receive may be a correlative cause of this. In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500 die of various diseases—and how many more that survive are rendered miserable by maladies not immediately mortal! The quality and quantity of a mother’s milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. On an island, near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus before they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the mainland.—Sir G. Mackenzie’s History of Iceland—note by Shelley.”