Page:Growing Up (1928).djvu/78

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there will be a mother who will have triplets, that is three babies at a birth, or even quadruplets, that is four babies at one birth.

Only a few animals, generally the larger ones like the elephant and the horse and the cow, grow alone in the body of the mother. Most animals are born in littets, that is two, three, six, ten or even fourteen or more are born one after another of the same mother at the same birth. From three to eight puppies and from three to six kittens are the usual number of babies that dogs and cats have, and often as many as fourteen little pigs will be born in the same litter.

At the beginning of their lives animals and babies are so nearly alike that you could not tell them one from the other. If you were to see the egg of a baby and the egg of an elephant and of a mouse you would not know which was which. A rabbit that has been growing for a week seems so much like a baby that has been growing for three or four weeks that it would be hard for you to tell them apart. But the longer that animals and babies grow the more different from each other they become.