the birth of a girl with as sincere happiness as we would lavish upon our male children; and a case is actually on record, which shows how generally accepted is this idea in the native mind, where an English gentleman at Bombay actually received a visit of condolence from an intelligent native friend. A little girl had been born to him; and the polite Hindoo, having heard of it, had called to express his sympathy with the unfortunate parent!
The prevalence and extent of the horrid crime of female infanticide attracted, many years ago, the attention of the humane men whom England sent to rule her India possessions, and from the official statistics collected, which are now before us, we are able to give some accurate idea of the fatal devastation which, for ages past, this hellish cruelty has wrought upon the female life of India.
Mr. Wilkinson's reports were based upon a census taken in one locality where this custom was known to exist. By the simple, spontaneous admission of the guilty parties themselves, it turned out that in one tribe the portion of sons to daughters was one hundred and eighteen to sixteen; in a second, two hundred and forty to ninety-eight; in a third, one hundred and thirty-one to sixty-one; in a fourth, fourteen to four; and in a fifth, thirty-nine to seven. Now, as statistics in Europe and America have all shown but one result, namely, that the births of males and females are of nearly equal amount, the only inference to be drawn from this disparity is, that females equal, or nearly equal, in number to the difference here exhibited had been destroyed.
The murders, therefore, perpetrated in the first of the above tribes were seventy-seven per cent, of the females born. The aggregate result given by the census taken in this locality was six hundred and thirty-two sons to two hundred and twenty-five daughters. This is an average of thirty-six daughters to one hundred boys; or, in other words, of every one hundred females born sixty-four must have been cruelly immolated by their parents; or, in round numbers, about two thirds were destroyed, and but one third saved alive.
Some of the villages examined presented a more terrible exhibit
