MOCHA. 
383 
It has been argued by Mr. Bruce and others, that polygamy is 
necessary in the East, in consequence of two females being born to 
one male. I inquired of the Hadje Abdallah if this were true, 
according to his experience ; and he assured me that it was. I con- 
fess, however, that I received the information from theMussuhnauns 
with some doubt, as it is evidently used by them as an argument 
in support of their law, which gives them the privilege of having 
more than one wife. Dr. Russell, who, from his long residence at 
Aleppo, had better opportunities of investigating the truth, not 
only expresses a strong doubt on the subject, but also gives, in a 
note, the report of a Maronite priest, who was employed in 1740, 
to number that nation in Aleppo ; by which it appears that there 
were one thousand five hundred and thirty « three females and one 
thousand five hundred males ; a disproportion that cannot serve 
as the ground for an argument in favour of polygamy. Mr. Niebuhr 
also gives several lists, made by the Christian missionaries, of the 
children annually baptised by them in India; and here the males 
and females were nearly equal to each other, but rather in favour 
of the males ; and though in the list of those baptised in Persia 
there are only one hundred and nineteen to one hundred and fifty- 
one females, yet this difference is far from conclusive, even if it were 
not supposed to be owing to some accidental circumstance : a con- 
jecture that may by no means appear improbable, when it is ob- 
served, how greatly this list differs from the others, taken in equally 
hot climates, and where polygamy is as common as in Arabia. 
Were the fact, as asserted by the Mussulmauns, to be proved, I 
should still doubt whether polygamy was not the cause, instead of 
the effect, of the birth of the supernumerary females. 
