Human nature, unfortunately, has proved but a frail barrier to crime of this character in all parts of the world, and the facts of Chinese infanticide are indisputable. The witnesses are too numerous, the crime is too public, and the evidences of it too notorious to deny its existence. The children destroyed are girls; the most common methods of destroying them are: 1st, by drowning in a tub of water; 2d, by throwing into some running stream; 3d, by burying alive. The last-named mode is adopted under the hope and with the superstitious belief that the next birth will be a boy. The excuse is that it is too expensive to educate a girl, but if some friend will take the child to bring up as a wife for a little boy, the parents will sell or give away the infant rather than destroy it. The regular price is two thousand copper cash, or $2, for every year of their lives; for sometimes a girl will be saved for a year or two, and then sold for a wife or slave. Many instances have come to the notice of missionaries where large families of girls have been destroyed. There is one woman now employed as a nurse in a missionary's family at Fuh-Chow, who says that her mother had eight girls and three boys, and that she was the only girl permitted by her father to live. We never heard of an instance of a boy's being destroyed at birth. There is a village about fifteen miles from Fuh-Chow, which is swarming with boys, but where girls are very scarce. The people account for it themselves by alleging the common practice of killing the girls at birth, a practice which is indulged in by the rich as well as by the poor.[2] But to enter into all the particularities of Chinese life which attract the attention at Shanghai as in other cities, would be to compile an account of China and her customs.