All women, the world over, who expect to become mothers, are curious as to the sex of the unborn child; and every old wife has a bundle of unfailing signs and omens which determine the question out of hand without leaving room for doubt. In Sicily these signs are as follows—among others of dubious modesty, which it is as well to leave in obscurity. If you suddenly ask an expectant mother: “What is the matter with your hand?” and she holds up or turns out the palm of her right hand, her child will be a boy. If she holds up her left hand or turns out the back of her right, it will be a girl. If she strews salt before the threshold, the sex of the first person who enters in at the door determines that of the unborn—a man for a boy, a woman for a girl. If she goes to draw water from the well, and throws a few drops over her shoulder without looking back, the sex of the first person who passes, after the performance of this “sortilegio,” in like manner determines the sex of the child. After the first child, the line in which the hair grows at the nape of the neck of the preceding is an unfailing sign of that which is coming after. If it grows in a peak it presages a boy, if straight a girl. This is also one of the infallible signs in India. If the woman sees an ugly or a deformed creature, and does not say in an audible voice: “Diu ca lu fici”—God has made it—she will produce a monster. If she repeats the charm, devoutly as she ought, she has saved her child from deformity. The patron saint of expectant mothers in Sicily is S. Francisco di Paola. To secure his intervention in their behalf they go to church every Friday to pray specially to him. The first time they go they are blessed by putting on the cord or girdle proper to this saint; by receiving, before their own offering, two blessed beans, a few blessed wafers, and a small wax taper, also blessed, round which is twisted a slip of paper whereon is printed—“Ora pro nobis Sancte Pater Francisce di Paola.” The cord is worn during the time of pregnancy; the candle is lighted during the pains of childbirth, when heavenly interposition is necessary; and the beans and wafers are eaten as an act of devotion which results in all manner of good to both mother and child. In country places pregnant women who believe in the knowledge of the midwife rather than in the science of the doctor, are still bled at stated times, generally on the “even” months. Dr. Pitrè knew personally one woman who had been bled the incredible number of two hundred and thirteen times during her pregnancy. She had moreover heart disease; and she offered herself as a wet-nurse.