The _taille a fleur de ventre_ of the Chinese is a somewhat primitive procedure. According to Dr. Morache, in his account of China in the "Dic. Ency. des Sciences Medicales," the operation is as follows: "The patient, be he adult or child, is, previous to the operation, well fed for some time. He is then put in a hot water bath. Pressure is exercised on the penis and testes, in order to dull sensibility. The two organs are compressed into one packet, the whole encircled with a silk band, regularly applied from the extremity to the base, until the parts have the appearance of a long sausage. The operator now takes a sharp knife, and with one cut removes the organ from the pubis; an assistant immediately applies to the wound a handful of styptic powder, composed of odoriferous raisins, alum, and dried puffball powder (boletus-powder). The assistant continues the compression till haemorrhage ceases, adding fresh supplies of the astringent powders; a bandage is added and the patient left to himself. Subsequent haemorrhage rarely occurs, but obliteration of the canal of the urethra is to be dreaded. If at the end of the third or fourth day the patient does not make water, his life is despaired of. In children the operation succeeds in two out of three cases; in adults, in one-half less. Poverty is the cause which induces adults to allow themselves to be thus mutilated. It is said to be difficult to distinguish these last from ordinary Chinese men. Adult-made eunuchs are much sought after, as they present all the attributes of virility without any of its inconvenience." The study of the evolutionary moves or processes passed by eunuchism in its relation to music and the drama tends to rob these otherwise civilizing and enlightened arts of the aureoles of poetry and gentility with which they have been surrounded. From Bergmann we learn that the practice originated in the Orient, where female voices were held in higher esteem in singing, and where the profane songs that accompanied the dance were chanted by women. The Hebraic regulations permitted neither women nor eunuchs to sing in their temples. With the establishment of the early Christian Church in Oriental countries, more or less of the ancient Judaic customs were retained, and in addition a too literal interpretation of the words of St. Paul was adhered to, which said that women should not be _heard_ in the Church. The Oriental Church from these reasons long remained in a quandary; according to the ceremonials, it was deemed requisite to imitate as near as possible the voices of the angelic seraphims, and this could not be done by the rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of Cybele, had done before him.