BEESTINGS, or BREASTINGS, a term used by country-people for the first milk taken from a cow after calving.—The beestings are of a thick consistency, and yellow colour, seeming impregnated with sulphur. Dr Morgan imagines them peculiarly fitted and intended by nature to cleanse the young animal from the remnants gathered in its stomach and intestines during its long habitation in utero. The like quality and virtue he supposes in women's first milk after delivery; and hence infers the necessity of the mother's suckling her own child, rather than committing it to a nurse whose first milk is gone.