The prematurely born infant, too young to suck and swallow, requires a special feeding technic. Catheter feeding (gavage), introduced by French physicians many years ago, has been the method of choice for infants weighing less than 4 or 5 pounds (1,814 or 2,267 Gm.). Some of the nurses who are skilled in the art of feeding by gavage consider nasal gavage less hazardous, but the catheter used must be small in diameter (6 to 10 F). The use of such a catheter may make the introduction of an ounce of food a tedious procedure. Such catheters are cleaned with difficulty, and curds of coagulated milk often obstruct the lumen. The mechanical irritation caused by the repeated introduction and extraction of the tube also detracts from this method of feeding of the smallest infants. Many graduate nurses have never used gavage for a prematurely born infant, and pupil nurses usually hesitate