This practice is now very common throughout the world, and there is
reason to believe that it prevailed much more extensively during former
times. (12. Mr. M Lennan, Primitive Marriage, 1865. See especially on
exogamy and infanticide, pp. 130, 138, 165.) Barbarians find it
difficult to support themselves and their children, and it is a simple
plan to kill their infants. In South America some tribes, according to
Azara, formerly destroyed so many infants of both sexes that they were
on the point of extinction. In the Polynesian Islands women have been
known to kill from four or five, to even ten of their children; and
Ellis could not find a single woman who had not killed at least one. In
a village on the eastern frontier of India Colonel MacCulloch found not
a single female child. Wherever infanticide (13. Dr. Gerland ( Ueber
das Aussterben der Naturvolker, 1868) has collected much information
on infanticide, see especially ss. 27, 51, 54. Azara ( Voyages, etc.,
tom. ii. pp. 94, 116) enters in detail on the motives. See also
M Lennan (ibid. p. 139) for cases in India. In the former reprints of
the 2nd edition of this book an incorrect quotation from Sir G. Grey
was unfortunately given in the above passage and has now been removed
from the text.) prevails the struggle for existence will be in so far
less severe, and all the members of the tribe will have an almost
equally good chance of rearing their few surviving children. In most
cases a larger number of female than of male infants are destroyed, for
it is obvious that the latter are of more value to the tribe, as they
will, when grown up, aid in defending it, and can support themselves.
But the trouble experienced by the women in rearing children, their
consequent loss of beauty, the higher estimation set on them when few,
and their happier fate, are assigned by the women themselves, and by
various observers, as additional motives for infanticide.
When, owing to female infanticide, the women of a tribe were few, the
habit of capturing wives from neighbouring tribes would naturally
arise. Sir J. Lubbock, however, as we have seen, attributes the
practice in chief part to the former existence of communal marriage,
and to the men having consequently captured women from other tribes to
hold as their sole property. Additional causes might be assigned, such
as the communities being very small, in which case, marriageable women
would often be deficient. That the habit was most extensively practised
during former times, even by the ancestors of civilised nations, is
clearly shewn by the preservation of many curious customs and
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