Before he had an opportunity of ascertaining the nature of the circumcision of the Egyptian women, Sonnini also supposed it consisted of the amputation of the excrescence of the nymphae or clitoris, according to circumstances, and according as the parts were more or less elongated. He says it is very probable that these operations have been performed, not only in Egypt, but in several other countries in the East, where the heat of the climate and other causes may produce too luxuriant a growth of those parts, and this, he adds, he had the more reason to think, since, on consulting several Turks who had settled at Rosetta, respecting the circumcision of their wives, he could obtain from them no other idea but that of these painful mutilations. They likewise explained to him the motives. Curious admirers as they were of smooth and polished surfaces, every inequality, every protuberance, was in their eyes a disgusting fault. They asserted too that one of these operations abated the ardour of the constitutions of their wives, and diminished their facility of procuring illicit enjoyments. Niebuhr relates that Forskal and another of his fellow-travellers, having expressed to a great man at Cairo, at whose country seat they were, the great desire they had to examine a girl who had been circumcised, their obliging host immediately ordered a country girl eighteen years of age to be sent for, and allowed them to examine her at their ease. Their painter made a drawing of the parts after the life, in presence of several Turkish domestics; but he drew with a trembling hand, as they were apprehensive of the consequences it might bring upon them from the Mahometans. A plate from this drawing was given by Professor Blumenbach, in his work _De Generis humani Varietate nativa_, from which it is evident that the traveller saw nothing but the amputation of the nymphae and clitoris, the enlargement of which is so much disliked by husbands in these countries. Sonnini suspected that there must be something more in it than an excess of these parts, an inconvenience, which, being far from general among the women, could not have given rise to an ancient and universal practice. Determining to remove his doubts on the subject, he took the resolution, which every one to whom the inhabitants of Egypt are known, he says, will deem sufficiently bold, not to procure a drawing of a circumcised female, but to have the operation performed under his own eyes. Mr. Fornetti, whose complaisance and intelligence were so frequently of service to him, readily undertook to assist him in the business; and a Turk, who acted as broker to the French merchants, brought to him at Rosetta a woman, whose trade it was to perform the operation, with two young girls, one of whom was going to be circumcised, the other having been operated on two years before.