Now, from a diligent inquiry into the south, and scripture-part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul (or Nineveh) to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women born to one man. There is indeed a fraction over, but not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is very nearly three, or two and three-fourths to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called _Horan_, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta, unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But, from Suez to the straits of Babelmandeb, which contains the three Arabias, the portion is fully four women to one man, which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the Line, and 30° beyond it. The Imam of Sana[191] was not an old man when I was in Arabia Felix in 1769; but he had 88 children then alive, of whom 14 only were sons.--The priest of the Nile had 70 and odd children; of whom, as I remember, above 50 were daughters. It may be objected, that Dr Arbuthnot, in quoting the bills of mortality for twenty years, gave most unexceptionable grounds for his opinion, and that my single assertion of what happens in a foreign country, without further foundation, cannot be admitted as equivalent testimony; and I am ready to admit this objection, as bills of mortality there are none in any of these countries. I shall therefore say in what manner I attained the knowledge which I have just mentioned. Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journies with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours, or acquaintance. This not being a captious question, or what any one would scruple to answer, there was no interest to deceive; and if it had been possible, that two or three had been so wrong-headed among the whole, it would have been of little consequence. I then asked my landlord at Sidon, (suppose him a weaver,) how many children he has had? He tells me how many sons, and how many daughters. The next I ask is a smith, a tailor, a silk-gatherer, the Cadi of the place, a cowherd, a hunter, a fisher, in short every man that is not a stranger, from whom I can get proper information. I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes arising from three or four hundred families indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other; and this, I am confident, will give the result to be three women to one man in 50° out of the 90° under every meridian of the globe.