The trade of castrating boys, to be sold as eunuchs for the harems of Turkey and Persia, is quite a flourishing one even to-day; but, as most of the children die after the operation—radical of course, to prevent subsequent "accidents" to the ladies of the harem—those who do survive command extravagant prices, and the possession of a boy-eunuch in the East commands as much social respect as that of a steam yacht or an automobile does here. The male choir in the Catholic Church, the exclusive retention of which has only recently occasioned so much disturbance in communities of that faith,1 is responsible for the mediaeval practice of castrating boys, to prevent the natural development of their voices, and training them as soprano singers, a most magnificent effect of which could have been witnessed in the services of the Sistine Chapel at Rome, until the accession of the late pope, Leo XIII, who, I believe, abolished the practice.

Of those voluntary eunuchs who emasculated themselves on religious grounds, for the avoidance of sexual sin, and of whom Religious Eunuchs an early Church writer says—"Valesii tt seipsos cast-rant el hospites suos, hoc modo existimantes Deo se debere servire,"1 the case of Origen furnishes the most illustrious example.