S9{) Professor Hufeland on the comfaratwe 
makes you consider yourself as out of the world, and despair 
of seeing me any more. 
I have been long out of the world by deafness and extreme 
old age. I hope, however, if we should not meet again in this 
world, that we shall meet and renew our acquaintance in ano- 
ther. In the mean time, I am, with great esteem. Dear Sir, 
yours affectionately, Tho. Reid. 
Glasgow College, ) 
V^th April 1792. 
Art. XIV. — Remarhs on the Comparative Number of the 
Sexes at Birth, By M. Hufeland of Berlin. 
celebrated M. Hufeland of Berlin has inserted in his 
Journal of Practical Medicine, some observations in illustra- 
tion of the comparative numbers of the sexes at birth, which 
possess considerable interest. 
Dr Arbuthnot, physician to Queen Anne, first ( Phil. Traits. 
Vol. xxvii.) pointed out, from the bills of mortality of London, 
that the number of males born exceeded that of females. 
This was confirmed by Gravesende, and the proportion was de- 
termined by the laborious Siissmilch, from an immense mass of 
documents, to be 21 males to 20 females. It was however 
doubted if this law was universal ; and, in particular, Bruce and 
Niebuhr contended, that in countries where polygamy is tole- 
rated, the females exceed the males ; and Forster even went so 
far as to assert, that this excess of the females was owing to the 
feebleness of the men. But this effect is denied by Hufeland, 
from his own observations. One man in the prime of life be- 
got only daughters, and after he was old and debilitated, sons. 
Porter, the English Ambassador at the Porte, denied ( Phil. 
Trans, Vol. xlix.) the excess of female births in Turkey, and 
found that polygamy did not favour population, as the children 
commonly did not exceed from three to six in polygamous families. 
In China, the numbers are said to be equal ( Lettres edijiantes et 
curieuses^ Recueil 26.) In Tranquebar, an accurate record was 
kept for seventeen years by the missionaries, from which it ap- 
peared, that among the Europeans there, 156 boys and 141 
girls were born: and among the natives, 914 boys and 857 girls. 
Jn Calcutta, a four years register gave 1290 boys, and 1240 
