Of course it is the boy who is specially wanted in a family; and little boys are often dressed as little girls, in order to deceive the angels of disease and death, who, it is hoped, may thus pass them over as of less account.
To return to the belief formerly held that female infanticide was rampant all over China.

The next step was for the honest observer to admit that it was not known in his own particular district, but to declare that it was largely practised elsewhere.

This view, however, lost its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so on.

Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following argument,--a rare example of proving a negative--from which it will be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is quite beyond the bounds of the possible.

Those who have even a bowing acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at about the age of eighteen, is provided by his parents with a wife.