Secondly, "mulundu" in Angolan is singular, the plural being
"milundu"--a handful, the Persians say, is a specimen of the
heap. The excess of female births in low and unhealthy places (1,
309) and as the normal result of polygamy (3, 243), is a highly
interesting subject still awaiting investigation. I do not mean
that Douville was the first to observe this phenomenon, which
forced itself upon the notice of physiologists in ancient times.
Foster ("Cook's Third Voyage") remarks that, wherever men and
animals have many females, the feminine births preponderate over
the masculine; a fact there explained by the "organic molecule"
of Buffon. Pigafetta, the circumnavigator, gives the King of
Tidor eighteen daughters to eight sons.
The French traveller does not pretend to be a mineralogist, but
he does his best to lay open the metallic riches of the country;
he gives careful observations of temperature, in water as well as
air, he divines the different proportions of oxygen in the
atmosphere, and he even applies himself to investigating the
comparative heat of the negro's blood, an inquiry still far from
being exhausted. The most remarkable part is certainly the
medical, and here the author was simply in advance of his age.
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