About the dwarves...

[Walter]

How do Dwarves breed?

I mean, Aule made the the "Seven Fathers", but...

[Thorondor]

Let's see who can come up with the link to the thread about the bearded dwarven women fastest!

[Grond]

Alas, I was but reading it yesterday. I believe that it lies in the index of tLotR but I could be mistaken. T'was a footnote that said, I'll paraphrase "Many believed that the dwarves were made of stone and returned to that stone when they died, yet this was deemed not so by Gimli who said that they were born". Something like that..... it went on to say the of all dwarf women only Dis was named who was mother to Fili and Kili and sister to Thorin. I'll get the exact quote when I get home to the book.

In summary though, t'would appear they make babies the old fashioned way....... Grond will leave the rest to your imagination.

[Cian]

JRRt wrote some passages (relating to the making of the First Dwarves) that included mention of Dwarf-mates ~

It was Christopher Tolkien's opinion however that his father:
"... evidently abandoned the question of the origin of the female Dwarves, finding it intractible and the solutions unsatisfactory. Moreover in the finished form the element of the Eldest (Durin) being distinct from the others, and without mate, finds no place." CT

In the same light, Tolkien wrote a draft continuation of a Letter dated 1958, in which, at the mention of Aulë making *thirteen, JRRT footnoted: *"One, the eldest, alone, and six more with six mates." JRRT

One of the passages I refer to (just one, note) 'explained' that Ilúvatar added the mates, but would not amend the work of Aulë. In others, Aulë made Dwarf-mates (+ details and etc.).

We also see, in texts given in The Later Quenta Silmarillion section of HoMe, that Dwarf-women were indeed very few, and that few Dwarves ever wed.