The following cases from Girou may be mentioned. A vigorous man married a corpulent, melancholy, elderly blonde. Seven daughters were the result of the marriage, all of them resembling their father and grandfather. Many similar cases are mentioned by Girou, all of which may be found of interest to the reader, if he be inclined to regard preponderance of temperament, or physical disposition for procreation of the species as important factors. Included in his _repertoire_ of anecdotes are many interesting and piquant details respecting the results of the pairing of dissimilar temperaments which might be quoted, were it not that this would lead us too far from our subject, and also be of no service in the present inquiry. Bidder is in many respects inclined to give his assent to the theories of his predecessors, and states that women who bear their first child between the ages of twenty and twenty-one produce more girls than boys (Düsing). The older the woman is at the time of her first parturition, the greater number of male births. An excess of male births will occur in the case of those who first give birth to children between the ages of thirty and forty (Eckhardt). Ahlfeld insists that this is a universal rule in the case of women who become pregnant in later years. A great number of specialists are of this opinion, and apply the data afforded by statistics to support it in different ways. The evidence of Stieda, Berner, and Birelli, and especially that of Wilkens, respecting the domesticated mammals, leads, however, to this conclusion, that the theories respecting the relative proportions of male and female births set forth by Sadler and Hofacker must either be given up or their value considerably discounted. Specialists are also to be found who, in order to explain this theory, have availed themselves of Darwin’s law, and in a certain measure the results admit of this explanation. The older parent, who evidently under such normal circumstances as might be anticipated has a shorter time to live than the younger individual, his consort, naturally in the struggle for life, makes an effort for the preservation of his sex. Accordingly, the elderly husband of a young wife, or _vice versâ_, the elderly wife of a young husband, will make an effort to preserve the sex which is first threatened with death, but which may at least be replaced by a majority of births.