IgS studies of nature. 



commerce. Many enlightened travellers have 

 made this obfervation. 



Hear what that honeft Dutchman, Walter Schou- 

 ten, fays of the deferts of Bengal. " Toward the 

 ** South, along the fea-coafh, at the mouth of the 

 " Ganges, there is a very confiderable extent of 

 ** territory, defert and uncultivated, from the in- 

 ** dolence and inadtivity of the inhabitants, and 

 ** alfo from the fear which they are under of the 

 *' incurfions of ihofe of Arracan ; and of the cro- 

 *' codiles and other monfters which devour men, 

 ♦* lurking in the deferts, by the fides of brooks, 

 " of rivers, of morafles, and in caverns*." Ob^ 

 ftacles very inconfiderable, it mud be allowed, in 

 a Nation where Fathers fometimes fell their chil- 

 dren for want of the means of fupporting them \ 

 Berniery the phyfician, remarks likewife, in his 

 travels over the Mogul Empire, that he found a 

 great many, but deferted illands, at the mouth of 

 the Ganges, 



We muft afcribe, in general, to the exceffive 

 number of bachelors, that of profligate women ; 

 which univerfally are in exact proportion to each 

 other. This evil, too, is the cfted of a natural 

 re-action. As the two fexes are born and die in 



* JFaha- Schouten'^ Voyage to the Ealt-Intlies, vol. ii. page 154.. 



equal 



