Relative to extraordinary births, I may mention that within half a dozen
miles of this city, and not more than six weeks since, a poor woman gave
birth to four children, two of each sex, and all, with the mother, doing
well. Some millions are born without such, as I may term it, a
phenomenon.
In a very late Brussells paper I find it stated, that in nine years the
wife of a tradesman had twenty-four children, three on each
delivery,--"chose désespérante (it is added) pour le mari, qui désirait
transmettre son nom, car c'étaient toutes des filles." Mercier, in his
_Tableau de Paris_ (1786) quotes _L'Histoire de l'Académie des Sciences_
of the preceding century for a similar fact, where it is asserted that a
baker's wife had twenty-one children in seven years, three at each
birth, and that he had again three children at a birth by a servant
maid.