English clergy.[1] It is even seen to vary spontaneously. In the year 1886, during several months, the proportion of feminine births rose at Paris. In France, for a period of forty-four years, it has happened five times in one department, and six times in another, that the female births have been in excess. At the Cape of Good Hope, among the whites, for several years there have been ninety to ninety-nine masculine births. The reason or reasons of these spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes still escapes us. We verify it only, and we are warranted in concluding that the production of sex in the embryo depends on some relatively second causes. It is sure, for example, that the clergy of England are not of a special race. If, however, they have more male children than the other inhabitants of England, the fact can only depend on intimate particulars of their kind of life. This reminds us of certain biblical precepts relative to conjugal life, and the too neglected theory of M. Thury (of Geneva) on the influence of the degree of ovular maturity on the production of the sexes.
But spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes are always feeble; even the matrimonial type does not seem to influence them, for in the harems of Siam the sexual relation of births is the same as in Europe.[2] On the other hand, it is proved that race-horses, which are very polygamous, since they serve as stallions, have male and female descendants in exactly equal proportions.[3]
It is the social actions of men which produce the most profound disturbances in the proportion of the sexes. To begin with, in savage or barbarous countries, where violent death has become an ordinary occurrence for men, the number of adult females much exceeds that of adult males. Thus, at Bantou, when the Dutch established themselves there, they found ten women to one man.[4] In La Soñora, at the end of a civil war, there were seven women to one man. In spite of all moral and legal precepts, such conditions unfailingly result in polygamy, disguised or not.
On the contrary, a custom very widely spread in savage
