PAIRING. 137 
CHAPTER XI. 
PAIRING OF BIRDS. 
Ir would not be easy to select a more striking 
instance of the wisdom displayed in regulating the 
works of creation, than the extraordinary, and, to 
us, inexplicable fact of the males and females of all 
animals being always found in nearly the same pro- 
portional numbers. With respect to mankind, for 
“example, it has been proved, by taking a census of 
the population in different countries, that the ratio 
of the two sexes shows very little variation. Hufe- 
land found that in Germany there are about twenty- 
one males to twenty females; and by the popula- 
tion returns for England and Wales from 1811 to 
1820, the number of males born was 1,664,557, and 
of females, 1,590,510. It has been inferred that the 
uniform excess of male births is providentially de- 
signed to meet the greater mortality arising from 
men being, by their habits of life, more exposed to 
dangers. No physiological investigation hitherto 
attempted has been successful in elucidating the 
more immediate causes of these wonderful facts, 
though some of the laws by which they are regu- 
lated have recently been successfully traced by the 
curious experiments of M. Girou de Buzareingues, 
who found, that with respect to the ages of the in- 
dividuals paired, and the proportion of the sexes 
produced, nearly the same principles held good 
among fowls as among quadrupeds, at least when 
both were domesticated. 
The males of quadrupeds seldom lend any assist- 
ance whatever in taking care of the young. The 
assistance of the male, indeed, in most animals 
which suckle their young, is not at all wanted, and 
hence he seldom takes ay notice, or even knows of 
2 
