Note (return) — FAMISHING PORTUGAL.
Reading edition
Notwithstanding this frightful mortality, the number of infants always on hand in the foundlings of Portugal is nearly 40,000, or 1 per cent of the entire population. One-eighth of all the reported births in the kingdom become foundlings: as for the non-reported ones, their fate is known only to the recording angel. Says Claudio Adriano da Costa: "Promiscuous intercourse has become common all over the country;" and he attributes it, though I think superficially, to the "misplaced indulgence to concubinage awarded by the rodas."12