Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/92

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fact, that in warm climates more females are born than males[1]; and secondly, the females leading a life of seclusion and temperance, and employed only in domestic offices, are entirely free from the dangers, and but little subject to the diseases which destroy the other sex. While the men are occupied in the hazardous pursuit of honour or of fortune in distant countries, from whence they are often doomed never to return, the women are born and die without ever quitting their paternal roof.

In the females of Brasil, as well as of other countries in the torid zone, there

  1. Speculative writers have either doubted or denied this assumption, but the observation of those who have resided many years in Asia, fully authorize our stating it as a "fact capable of demonstration."
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