among the ancients, a barbarous custom of laying down children by the sides of the highways, and other places most frequented, where they were left at the mercy of the public, and where it behoved them to perish unless taken up and educated by charitable and compassionate persons. Many exposed their children, merely because they were not in a condition to educate them; and as for those who exposed them for other reasons, they commonly did it with jewels, with a view no doubt to encourage those who found them to take care of their education if alive, or give them human burial if dead.