-) , STATISTICS OF SEX 



a preponderating influence in the direction of determining children of 

 his or her own sex. But Ahlfeklt reached the opposite conclusion, find- 

 ing that when the father was more than 10 years older than the mother, 

 there was a preponderance of female children instead of the normal excess 

 of male children. His numbers are, however, too few to base any con- 

 clusions upon; and the same is probably true of the statistics used by 

 Sadler. 



I have not attempted to investigate this subject by age because the 

 data are not at hand for the purpose. Instead of doing this, I have taken 

 the order of progression of children in families as found in the gene- 

 alogies already cited. In each family the sex of the several children 

 was tabulated in the order, first born, second born, third born, etc. Then 

 the total number of first-born children of each sex, the second born, and 

 so on, was taken. The results are shown in the following table in which 

 the first column gives the order of birth. This is followed by the 

 respective number of male and female first-born children. In the same 

 line the numbers are given for the second born, and so on. In families 

 of more than 14 children, the fourteenth and those following are all 

 tabulated together, as their separate numbers are too small to base a 

 conclusion upon. 



The fourth column gives the total number of -children; the fifth the 

 excess of males, and the sixth the percentage of this excess. 



COMPARISON OF MALE AND FEMALE CHILDREN IN THE ORDER OF BIRTH 



IN AMERICAN FAMILIES. 



Ex . ce89 Corrected 



of , m E 



Males 



641 8.9 6.7 



274 4.4 2.2 



73 1.4 -0.8 



121 3.0 0.8 



115 3.4 1.2 



68 2.5 0.3 



82 3.9 1.7 



28 1.8 -0.4 



79 7.3 5.1 



51 6.7 4.5 



25 5.3 3.1 



34 13.6 11.4 



19 15.4 13.2 



9 9.8 7.6 



Total... 18,482 16,863 35,345 1,619 4.6 



