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Custom of the Patriarchs, and is made a Part of Mahomet's Law; and if they were not so allowed the use of many Women promiscuously, it is certain they would still abstain from their Wives, during the time of their being with Child.
It is looked upon as a preposterous Thing, a Pollution and Impurity; nay, they take it to be nauseous and unnatural; the sober Men among them speak of it with detestation, and upbraid the Christians with it as acting more than Beastial, for that very few of the brute Creatures practise it; and, if you consider it with exactness, you will not find any of the Brutes that will admit, much less seek the Conjunction of their Sexes after Conception: However eager when Nature prompted, and however loud the Female calls the Male, yet, after the Fire of Nature is quenched, she fights him, and flies at him if he attacks her.
It would be an unpleasant Task, and unsuitable to the just Restraint which I have put upon my self in the first Undertaking of this difficult Work, if I should pretend to enter here into a Philosophical or Anatomical Description of the Reason and Nature of the brutal Appetites; their Seasons, their Conduct in them, and their punctual observing the Laws of Nature in the various Circumstances of those Seasons; their Conception; their bringing forth their young, their suckling and nourishing them afterwards; how regular, how exact, and how punctual the Creatures are to those Seasons; and how modest and unconcerned with one another when those Seasons are past, or in the due Intervals of them.
I say,
