Polygamtj and Concubinage permitted. 371 



sons* In sucli cases the two wives usually continue on the 

 best of terms, which cannot be said of those instances where 

 the second or third wife is introduced into the family by the 

 husband, without the intervention of his wife. According to 

 the old Chinese law, the man had to be thirty, the woman 

 twenty, before marriage. At present marriages, as a rule, are 

 made between sixteen and twenty years of age. It may be 

 assumed that one in every fifteen Chinese has more than one 

 wife ; the first, usually known as " number one," is generally 

 taken from inclination, whereas the rest are usually bought, 

 the price varying, according to their youth and beauty, from 

 100 to 600 dollars. This custom gives rise to quite a peculiar 

 trade. Chinese women make a practice of purchasing for 

 themselves from the poorer classes such of the female 

 children as are of good health and well-formed, whom they 

 bring up with great care, with the view of selling them, when 

 grown up, to the wealthy Chinese, and even sometimes to — 

 European residents.! The custom of child-murder is most 

 prevalent in the coast districts of the province of Fo-kien, so 

 that latterly there was a positive scarcity of women, and 

 marriageable girls had to be imported from the northern part 

 of the province. The prevalence of this custom of child - 

 murder in these localities is to be ascribed to the enormous 

 migration of the male population to Siam, to the islands 



* This custom is of remote antiquity in Oriental countries, as witness the circum- 

 stances attending the birth of Ishmael, and also of several of the children of Israel. 



t Many European residents at Hong-kong and Shanghai have Chinese mistresses 



bought in this way, who arc hound to live with them only so long as their masters 



choose. 



2 B 2 



