Stanley Hall ("Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891) has collected some of the
beliefs of young children as to the origin of babies. "God makes
babies in heaven, though the Holy Mother and even Santa Claus
make some. He lets them down and drops them, and the women or
doctors catch them, or He leaves them on the sidewalk, or brings
them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up again, or
mamma or the doctor or the nurse go up and fetch them, sometimes
in a balloon, or they fly down and lose off their wings in some
place or other and forget it, and jump down to Jesus, who gives
them around. They were also often said to be found in
flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long, you know, or
they grew in cabbages, or God puts them in water, perhaps in the
sewer, and the doctor gets them out and takes them to sick folks
that want them, or the milkman brings them early in the morning;
they are dug out of the ground, or bought at the baby store."

In England and America the inquisitive child is often told that
the baby was found in the garden, under a gooseberry bush or
elsewhere; or more commonly it is said, with what is doubtless
felt to be a nearer approach to the truth, that the doctor
brought it. In Germany the common story told to children is that
the stork brings the baby. Various theories, mostly based on
folk-lore, have been put forward to explain this story, but none
of them seem quite convincing (see, e.g., G. Herman,
"Sexual-Mythen," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol. i, Heft 5,
1906, p. 176, and P. Näcke, _Neurologische Centralblatt_, No. 17,
1907). Näcke thinks there is some plausibility in Professor
Petermann's suggestion that a frog writhing in a stork's bill