By the time a married woman had reached middle life her interest in her original home may have greatly weakened. There are now young marriageable girls of her own growing up, each of whom in turn repeats the experience of her mother. To their fathers and also to their brothers these girls are at once a problem and a menace. Could the birth-rate of girls be determined by ballot of all the males of full age, it is probable that in a few generations the Chinese race would become extinct. The expression "commodity-on-which-money-has-been-lost," is a common periphrasis for a girl. They no sooner learn a little sewing, cooking, etc., than they are exported, and it is proverbial that water spilled on the ground is a synonym for a daughter. "Darnel will not do for the grain-tax, and daughters will never support their mothers." These modes of speech represent modes of thought, and the prevailing thought, although happily not the only thought of the Chinese people. Girls as a rule have next to no opportunities for cultivating friendships with one another. The readiness with which under favourable condition such attachments are formed and perpetuated, shows how great a loss is their persistent absence. When it is considered that each Chinese family consists not of a man and his wife and their children, but of married sons, and of their several wives, each one introduced into the circle in the same compulsory way, each with a strong and an uncurbed will, yet powerless to assert herself except by harsh speeches and bad temper, it is evident that the result is not likely to be unity. In the eye of Chinese law brothers are equal, and though the elder has some advantages, a portion larger than that of the others is not one of them. Sometimes the young married pair are given an outfit, say of cotton, for spinning and weaving, and are thenceforth expected to support themselves by this capital and their own added labour. Not infrequently an unequal distribution of the land is made among several brothers by the father while living, a wrong for which there is no remedy other than remonstrance. Neither if the father should conceive the idea of depriving a son of any portion at all in the land, is there effective redress. Should the property be held in common according to Chinese traditions, it is a physical, a psychological, and a moral impossibility that there should not be ceaseless friction among so many claimants for what is often at best a most inadequate support.