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 consistence, and yellow colour, seeming impregnated with sulphur. Dr Morgan imagines them peculiarly fitted and intended by nature to cleanse the young animal from the re-crements 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.