The death rate among children is large. Of fifteen families in Bontoc,
each having had three or more children, the death rate up to the age
of puberty was over 60 per cent. According to the Magulang census
the death rate of children from 5 to 10 years of age is 63.73 per cent.

The new-born babe is as light in color as the average American babe,
and is much less red, instead of which color there is the slightest
tint of saffron. As the babe lies naked on its mother's naked breast
the light color is most strikingly apparent by contrast. The darker
color, the brown, gradually comes, however, as the babe is exposed
to the sun and wind, until the child of a year or two carried on its
mother's back is practically one with the mother in color.

Some of the babes, perhaps all, are born with an abundance of dark hair
on the head. A child's hair is never cut, except that from about the
age of 3 years the boy's hair is "banged" across the forehead. Fully
30 per cent of children up to 5 or 6 years of age have brown hair --
due largely to fading, as the outer is much lighter than the under
hair. In rare cases the lighter brown hair assumes a distinctly red
cast, though a faded lifeless red. Before puberty is reached, however,
all children have glossy black hair.

The iris of a new-born babe is sometimes a blue brown; it is decidedly
a different brown from that of the adult or of the child of five
years. Most children have the Malayan fold of the eyelid; the lower
lid is often much straighter than it is on the average American. When,
in addition to these conditions, the outer corner of the eye is higher
than the inner, the eye is somewhat Mongolian in appearance. About
one-fifth of the children in Bontoc have this Mongolian-like eye,
though it is rarer among adults -- a fact due, in part, apparently,