(Continued)
It has also been asserted that monogamy is the natural form of human marriage because there is an almost equal number of men and women. But this is by no means the case. The numerical proportion between the sexes varies, and in some cases varies greatly, among different peoples.
In the whole district of Nutka, it seemed to Meares that there were not so many women as men, whereas, further north, the women decidedly preponderated.2890 Among the Kutchin, according to Kirby, women form the minority;2891 and they seem to hold the same position among the Upper Californians and Western Eskimo.2892 But as a rule, among the North American aborigines, the opposite is apparently the case. Thus there are more women than men among certain Eskimo tribes, according to Dr. King; among the natives of the Sitka Islands, according to Lisiansky; among the Californian Shastika, according to Mr. Powers.2893 The census of the Creeks taken in the year 1832 showed 6,555 men and 7,142 women; that of the Indian population around Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, the Upper Mississippi, &c., in the same year, 3,144 men and 3,571 women, excluding children, that of the Nez Percés in Oregon, taken in 1851 by Dr. Dart, 698 men and 1,182 women.2894 Among the Blackfeet and Shiyann, according to Mr. Morgan—among the Puncahs and some other tribes, according to Mr. Catlin—the number of women is said to be twice as large as that of men, and in some cases even three times as large.2895
In Yucatan, according to Stephens, there are two women to one man; among the Guaranies, according to Azara, fourteen women to thirteen men; in Cochabamba, according to Gibbon, even five to one.2896 Among the Zapotecs and other nations of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the women are greatly in excess of the men;2897 whereas, among the Tarumas,2898 Avanos, Maypurs,2899 and Guanas,2900 the men are stated to be more numerous than the women. Von Martius says that among the Indians of Brazil, the number varied in some villages in favour of the male sex, in others in favour of the female.2901
In Australia the men seem generally to be in the majority.2902 Speaking of the Australian natives, the Rev. L. Fison says, “I think we may suppose that the number of males generally exceeds that of females among the lower savages; at least, quite a number of observers declare that such is the fact.”2903 Among the Western Australians, according to Mr. Oldfield, at all times the males are in excess of the other sex.”2904 Wilhelmi makes a similar statement with regard to several other tribes;2905 but this rule does not apply to all the Australians. “On Herbert River,” says Herr Lumholtz, “the women are more numerous than the men; this is also the case among the tribes south-west of the Carpentarian Gulf and elsewhere. But, according to accurate observations, the opposite is the case in a large part of Australia.”2906 In some tribes of the interior, Mr. Sturt found that among children there were about two girls to one boy.2907
In Tasmania, according to Breton, the men greatly exceeded the women in number.2908 So also in Tahiti, where, at the time of Mr. Ellis’s arrival, there were probably four or five men to one woman;2909 in Maupiti, where the disproportion between the sexes among adults was at the rate of three men to two women;2910 and in Easter Island, where, according to the estimates of Cook and La Pérouse, the men were twice as numerous as the women.2911 In the Sandwich Islands, Nukahiva, and some islands belonging to the Solomon Group, the male sex predominated;2912 and among the Maoris, according to a census taken in the year 1881, there were 24,370 men and 19,729 women.2913 In Makin Island, of the Kingsmill Group, on the other hand, Wood represented the women as outnumbering the men.2914 The same was to a very great extent the case in Tukopia;2915 and d’Albertis says that in Naiabui, a village in New Guinea with 300 inhabitants, “there are more women than men by about a third.”2916 Both sexes are nearly equally represented at Port Moresby,2917 and according to Marsden, in Sumatra.2918 In Sarawak the women are less numerous than the men.2919
In Ceylon a considerable disparity is exhibited by the returns. According to Pridham, it is found in the greatest degree among the Sinhalese, among whom the surplus of men averages twelve per cent., but it is also observable in the case of the Malabar population in the northern province, where the surplus of men averages six per cent.2920 Robert Orme states that, in India, the number of women exceeds that of men;2921 but this is certainly not the case in every part of the country. In a census of the North-West Provinces, taken during the year 1866, the proportions between the sexes were found to be 100 men to 86·6 women, and, in the Panjab, even 100 to 81·8.2922 In some districts of the Himalayas there is a surplus of males, in others of females.2923 In Kashmir, the proportion of men to women is as three to one.2924 In the Buddhist country of Ladakh, says Sir A. Cunningham, “it will be observed that the females outnumber the males, while the reverse is the case in the Mussulman districts along the Indus.”2925 In Malwa, in Central India, the number of women surpasses the number of men,2926 and the same, according to Sir John Bowring, is to a great extent the case in China.2927 The Todas of the Neilgherry Hills, on the other hand, amounted in the year 1867, according to Mr. Breeks, to 455 males and 249 females of all ages, whilst Mr. Marshall some few years ago found the Toda males of all ages bear the proportion to females of all ages of 100 to 75.2928 Among the Mongols, as we are informed by Prejevalsky, “the women are far less numerous than the men;”2929 and the same is said to have been the case with the Massagetæ, and to be the case still in Kamchatka.2930
As for the peoples of Africa, I have found two cases only of an excess of men, the one among the population of Galega, to the north-east of Madagascar, the other among the Quissama tribe in Angola.2931 The reverse seems decidedly to be the rule. Thus, from Morocco Dr. Churcher writes to me that “there appears to be a striking disproportion, though there is no such thing as statistics in this land.” In Ma Bung, in the Timannee country, Major Laing counted three women to one man.2932 A census taken in Lagos in 1872 showed among the population of African origin, 27,774 men and 32,353 women.2933 Among the Negroes of the Gold Coast, according to Bosman; in Latúka, according to Emin Pasha; among the Waguha of West Tanganyika, according to Mr. A. J. Swann; among the Wa-taïta, according to Mr. Joseph Thomson, women predominate.2934 Mr. Cousins is inclined to think that the same is the case with the Cis-Natalian Kafirs, “as there are few bachelors, and the majority of men have more than one wife.”2935 In Uganda, says the Rev. C. T. Wilson, “the female population is largely in excess of the male, the proportion being about three and a half to one.”2936
In European countries, the number of men and of women from fifteen to twenty years of age is generally almost the same; but in an earlier period of life there are more men than women, and, in a later, more women than men.2937
This disparity in the numbers of the sexes is due to various causes. The preponderance of women depends to a great extent upon the higher mortality of men. Dr. Sutherland found that the average age of 109 Eskimo was nearly 22 years—that of the females 24·5, that of the males 19·3 years.2938 The men pass most of their time at sea, in snow and rain, heat and cold, and many of them are drowned. The result of this troublesome and dangerous life is that few of them attain the age of fifty, whereas many women reach the age of seventy or even eighty. This, according to Dr. King, is the reason why, among this people, there are generally fewer men than women.2939 Mr. Bancroft states that, among the Ingaliks near the mouth of the Yukon, some of the women reach sixty, while the men rarely attain more than forty-five years.2940 In Europe, the death-rate is higher among men than among women, partly because of the greater dangers they are exposed to. Among many savage and barbarous peoples, however, the greater mortality of the male population depends chiefly upon the destructive influence of war.2941 “As all nations of Indians in their natural condition,” says Mr. Catlin, “are unceasingly at war with the tribes that are about them, ... their warriors are killed off to that extent, that in many instances two, or sometimes three women to a man are found in a tribe.”2942 According to Ellis, it is supposed by the Missionaries in Madagascar that, in consequence of the destructive ravages of war, in some of the provinces there are among the free portion of the inhabitants five, and in other three, women to one man, whilst the proportion of the sexes seems to be equal at birth.2943 But I am inclined to think that this cause operates principally at tolerably advanced stages of civilization, and only in a smaller degree among the rudest savages, who, devoid of any definite tribal organization, live a wandering life, scattered in families or hordes consisting of a few persons. Thus, with regard to the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges writes to me, “On several occasions when some hundreds of natives have been gathered together, I have taken censuses of them, and have always found the sexes equal or nearly so.... War was unknown, though fightings were frequent, but women took part in them as energetically as the men, and suffered equally with them—if anything, more.” Among the Australians also, as we have seen, wars do not cause any disproportion between the sexes.
The surplus of males is often due to female infanticide;2944 and among certain peoples there is another cause which must be taken into account. Captain Lewin states that, among the Toungtha, women die at a comparatively early age because of the constant labour which their sex entails upon them, whereas the men live very long.2945 And the same is said by Mr. Kirby with regard to the Kutchin.2946
Moreover, there is a disproportion between the sexes at birth. Among some peoples more boys are born, among others more girls; and the surplus is often considerable. Mr. Ross thinks that, among the Eastern Tinneh, “the proportion of births is rather in favour of females,” whilst the Aht women seem to have more boys than girls.2947 Von Humboldt found by examining baptismal registers, that more boys than girls were born in some communities of New Spain.2948 The same, according to M. Belly, is the case among the Indians of Guatemala and Nicaragua.2949
In the interior of Australia, Mr. Sturt met with several smaller tribes in which the number of girls was considerably greater than the number of boys, though in other tribes the proportion of births is in favour of males.2950 Sir. G. Grey drew up a list of 222 births, and of these 93 were females, 129 males.2951 In Tasmania, where the men were more numerous than the women, female infanticide was very rare.2952 The same is the case with the Sinhalese. They hold in abhorrence the crime of exposing children, says Dr. Davy; and it is never committed except in some of the wildest parts of the country, and even there only when the parents themselves are on the brink of starvation, and must either sacrifice a part of the family or die.2953 Haeckel assures us that among this people there is a permanent disproportion between male and female births, ten boys being born, on the average, to eight or nine girls.2954 Among the Todas, as we are informed by Mr. Marshall, the male children under fourteen years of age bear to the female children of the same period—ages estimated from their personal appearance—the ratio of 100 to 80·0,2955 though female infanticide is never practised, having long since become extinct through the action of the British Government.2956 Mr. Man’s inquiries tended to show that, among the Andamanese, there is a slight predominance of female over male births.2957
Bruce observes, “From a diligent inquiry into the South and Scripture-part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul (or Nineveh) to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women born to one man. There is indeed, a fraction over, but not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is very nearly three, or two and three-fourths to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called Horan, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta, unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But from Suez to the Straits of Babelmandeb, which contains the three Arabias, the portion is fully four women to one man, which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the Line, and 30° beyond it.” The manner in which Bruce came to these conclusions he describes as follows:—“Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journeys with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours, or acquaintance. This not being a captious question, or what any one would scruple to answer, there was no interest to deceive.... I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes arising from three or four hundred families indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other.”2958
This statement has been contradicted, but, so far as I know, it has not been proved to be wholly without foundation. It is to some extent made credible by what Dr. Churcher informs me regarding the disproportion of the sexes among the Moors of Morocco. As the result of his own observation, and that of a Mohammedan friend of his, he writes, “There is certainly a disproportion also at birth.... It would be safe to say that the female births are in the proportion of three females to one male; this partly accounts for the great rejoicing when a son is born. It reacts, however, in this way, that the people say, ‘Allah has given us more women than men, hence it is evident that polygamy is of God.’” In the Monbuttu country, according to Emin Pasha, “far more female children are born than males.”2959 And, regarding the disproportion between the sexes in Uganda, Mr. Wilson says, “Careful observation has established the fact that there are a good many more female births than male, and, on taking the groups of children playing by the roadside, there will always be found to be more girls than boys.”2960 Confronted by these definite statements, and by the fact that, in many African countries, there is a striking excess of women, we cannot with Süssmilch and Chervin2961 dismiss as wholly groundless Montesquieu’s well-known assertion that in the hot regions of the Old World more girls are born than boys,2962 although such disproportion certainly does not exist in every tropical country.
In Europe, the average male births outnumber the female by about five per cent., the still-born being excluded. But the rate varies in the different countries. Thus, in Russian Poland, only 101 boys are born to 100 girls, whilst, in Roumania and Greece, the proportion is 111 to 100.2963 The excess of male over female births is less when they are illegitimate than when legitimate.2964
Ever since Aristotle’s days inquirers have sought to discover the causes which determine the sex of the offspring; but no conclusion commanding general assent has yet been arrived at. The law of Hofacker and Sadler, according to which more boys are born if the husband is older than the wife, more girls if the wife is older than the husband, has attracted the greatest number of adherents.2965 But Noirot and Breslau have lately come to the opposite result, and, from the data of Norwegian statistics, Berner has shown that the law is untenable.2966 Dr. Goehlert has modified it so far that he holds the sex to be influenced, not by the relative, but by the absolute ages of the parents.2967 But W. Stieda has found from the registers of births in Alsace-Lorraine, that neither the relative nor the absolute ages of the parents exercise this sort of influence.2968 Again, Platter, in a paper in ‘Statistische Monatsschrift’ (Vienna) for 1875, concludes from the examination of thirty million births that the less the difference in the age of the parents the greater is the probability of boys being born.2969
It has, further, been suggested that polygyny leads to the birth of a greater proportion of female infants.2970 Dr. J. Campbell, however, who carefully attended to this subject in the harems of Siam, concludes that the proportion of male to female births is the same as from monogamous unions.2971 It has also been maintained, in a paper read before the “Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland” by Mr. John Sanderson, that, among the Kafirs resident in Natal and the adjoining countries, there was no surplus of female births in polygynous families.2972 The mass of facts collected by Mr. Sanderson is, however, too small to warrant any positive general deductions, and the like must be said of the information on the subject which Mr. Cousins and Mr. Eyles have sent me from the same part of South Africa. According to M. Remy and Mr. Hyde, on the other hand, the censuses of the Mormons show a great excess of female births.2973 But it is impossible to believe that polygynous intercourse per se can cause such an excess. Hardly any animal, as Mr. Darwin remarks, has been rendered so highly polygynous as English race-horses; nevertheless, their male and female offspring are almost exactly equal in number.2974
Of all the theories relating to this subject, the one set forth by Dr. Düsing2975 is by far the most important. According to him, the characters of animals and plants which influence the formation of sex are due to natural selection. In every species, the proportion between the sexes has a tendency to keep constant, but the organisms are so well adapted to the conditions of life that, under anomalous circumstances, they produce more individuals of that sex of which there is the greatest need. When nourishment is abundant, strengthened reproduction is an advantage to the species, whereas the reverse is the case when nourishment is scarce. Hence—the power of multiplication depending chiefly upon the number of females—organisms, when unusually well nourished, produce comparatively more female offspring; in the opposite case, more male. Dr. Düsing and, before him, Dr. Ploss,2976 have adduced several remarkable facts which seem to indicate that such a connection between abundance and the production of females, and between scarcity and the production of males, actually exists. It is, for example, a common opinion among furriers that rich regions give more female furs, poor regions more male.2977 It is an established fact that male births are in greater excess in country districts, the population of which is often badly fed, than in towns, where the conditions of life are shown to be, as a rule, more luxurious.2978 A similar excess is found among poor people as compared with the well-off classes.2979 Especially remarkable is Dr. Ploss’s statement that in highlands comparatively more boys are born than in lowlands. He found that, in Saxony, in the years 1847-1849, the proportion between male and female births was 105·9 to 100 in the region not exceeding 500 Paris feet above the level of the sea; 107·3 to 100, at a height of between 1,001 and 1,500 feet; and 107·8 to 100, at a height of between 1,501 and 2,000.2980
The evidence adduced by Dr. Ploss and Dr. Düsing is certainly not strong enough to permit us to regard their inference otherwise than as an hypothesis. But it is an hypothesis in which there seems to be some truth. There are ethnological facts which fully harmonize with it.
According to the census made by the collectors of districts in 1814, the whole population of the old English possessions in Ceylon formed a grand total of 475,883 souls, the males outnumbering the females by 27,193. Above the age of puberty there were 156,447 males, and 142,453 females; below that age, 95,091 males, and 81,892 females. Davy, who thinks that the census is not far from the truth, remarks, “The disproportion appears to be greatest in the poorest parts of the country, where the population is thinnest, and it is most difficult to support life; and smallest where there is least want. Indeed, in some of the fishing villages, where there is abundance of food, the number of females rather exceeds that of the males. May it not be a wise provision of provident Nature to promote, by extreme poverty, the generation of males rather than of females?”2981
Very remarkable is the striking coincidence of polyandry with the great poverty of the countries in which it prevails. It seems to be beyond doubt that this practice, as a rule, is due to scarcity of women. This is the view taken by most of the authorities to whom we owe our knowledge of polyandrous peoples.2982 And this disproportion between the sexes cannot, at least in many instances, be explained as a result of female infanticide. It was formerly said that the excess of men among the Todas was owing to the fact that all the girls beyond a certain number were destroyed in the cradle; but later investigations, as we have seen, show that the excess depends upon a striking disproportion between male and female births. Dr. Seemann states that, among those Eskimo tribes who practise polyandry, and among whom men are more numerous than women, female infanticide seems to be unknown.2983 With regard to the inhabitants of the Jounsar district of the Himalayas, Mr. Dunlop says, “Wherever the practice of polyandry exists, there is a striking discrepance in the proportions of the sexes among young children as well as adults; thus, in a village where I have found upwards of four hundred boys, there were only one hundred and twenty girls, yet the temptations to female infanticide, owing to expensive marriages and extravagant dowers which exist among the Rajputs of the plains, are not found in the hills where the marriages are comparatively inexpensive, and where the wife, instead of bringing a large dowry, is usually purchased for a considerable sum from her parents. In the Garhwal Hills, moreover, where polygamy is prevalent, there is a surplus of female children.... I am inclined to give more weight to Nature’s adaptability to national habit, than to the possibility of infanticide being the cause of the discrepance found in Jounsar.”2984 Female infants are killed only where they are a burden to the family or community to which they belong. But it will be shown subsequently that this is by no means the case with the inhabitants of the Himalayas. Hence it seems almost probable that, among the polyandrous peoples of these regions, as among the Todas and Sinhalese, more boys are born than girls.
It has been said that Tibetan polyandry depends upon the scarcity of women in a marriageable state, and that this scarcity is due to the Lama nunneries absorbing so many of the girls.2985 But Koeppen clears the religion of Tibet of any responsibility for polyandry, showing that the practice existed in the country before the introduction of Buddhism.2986 Mr. Baber states the very remarkable fact that “polygamy obtains in valleys, while polyandry prevails in the uplands.”2987 According to Mr. Rockhill, “female infanticide is not practised in Tibet, except among the women married to Chinese;”2988 and Grosier and Du Halde expressly assert that more males than females are born there.2989
Much stress must be laid on the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly in poor countries. “Polyandry,” says Lieutenant Cunningham, “appears to be essential in a country in which the quantity of cultivable land is limited, and in which pastures are not extensive, in which there are but few facilities for carrying on commerce, and in which there is no mineral wealth readily made available.”2990 “Il est connu,” says M. Vinson, “que sur la côte de Malabar la polyandrie a été établie pour obvier à la pénurie des subsistances.”2991 The Santals live in a country a great part of which is poor and sterile.2992 Regarding the Kunawari, Miss Gordon Cumming remarks, “There is a curious distinction in the social customs of the people in the upper and lower part of this valley. Below Wangtu it is said that polygamy prevails, as elsewhere; every man buying his wives from their parents for a given number of rupees.... Farther up the valley, however, where the people are very poor, and the tiny ridges of cultivation will not support large families, polyandry is common.”2993 Speaking of the Botis of Ladakh, Sir A. Cunningham asserts that polyandry “was a most politic measure for a poor country which does not produce sufficient food for its inhabitants.”2994 Mr. Bellew holds the same view with regard to polyandry in Lammayru in Ladakh:—“The population is kept down to a proportion which the country is capable of supporting. For the only parts of it which are habitable are the narrow valleys through which its rivers flow, and the little nooks in the mountains which are watered by their torrent tributaries.”2995 According to Mr. Wilson, even one of the Moravian missionaries defended the polyandry of the Tibetans “as good for the heathen of so sterile a country,” since superabundant population in an unfertile country, would be a great calamity and produce “eternal warfare or eternal want.”2996 A similar opinion is pronounced by Koeppen, Turner, de Ujfalvy, and Wilson.2997
It is commonly asserted that this coincidence of polyandry with poverty of material resources depends upon the intention of the people to check an increase of population, or upon the fact that the men are not rich enough to support or buy wives for themselves. But the accuracy of these assumptions is very doubtful. Among no polyandrous people, except the Tibetans with their nunneries do we know of a class of unmarried women. Moreover, even if a woman is sometimes a burden to her husband in a tribe that lives by hunting, her position is very different among a pastoral or agricultural people. In the Himalayas, as Mr. Fraser remarks, women are useful in the fields and in domestic labours, and fully earn their own subsistence.2998 Again, Turner, who had many opportunities of seeing Western Tibet, asserts that polyandry there is not confined to the lower ranks alone, but is frequently found in the most opulent families,—a statement with which Mr. Wilson agrees.2999 In Ceylon, as we have seen, it prevails chiefly among the wealthier classes.3000 And in the villages of the Kotegarh district in the Himalayas, according to Dr. Stulpnagel, most of the cases of polyandry are found among well-to-do peoples. “It is the poor,” he says, “who prefer polygamy, on account of the value of the women as household drudges.”3001 All these facts are certainly in favour of Dr. Düsing’s theory; and Dr. Floss’s statement as to the excess of male births in the highlands of Saxony becomes very important when we consider that polyandry chiefly occurs among mountaineers—in South Africa, as we have seen, as well as in Asia.
Dr. Düsing has, moreover, inferred that incest is less common in proportion as the number of males is great. The more males, he says, the farther off they have to go from their birthplace to find mates. Incest is injurious to the species; hence incestuous unions have a tendency to produce an excess of male offspring.3002 Thus, according to Dr. Nagel, certain plants, when self-fertilized, produce an excess of male flowers. According to Dr. Goehlert’s statistical investigation, in the case of horses, the more the parent animals differ in colour, the more the female foals outnumber the male.3003 Among the Jews, many of whom marry cousins, there is a remarkable excess of male births. In country districts where, as we have seen, comparatively more boys are born than in towns, marriage more frequently takes place between kinsfolk. It is for a similar reason, says Dr. Düsing, that illegitimate unions show a tendency to produce female births.3004
The evidence given by Dr. Düsing for the correctness of his deduction is, then, exceedingly scanty—if, indeed, it can be called evidence. Nevertheless, I think his main conclusion holds good. Independently of his reasoning, I had come to exactly the same result in a purely inductive way. There is some ground for believing that mixture of race produces an excess of female births. In his work on the ‘Tribes of California,’ Mr. Powers observes, “It is a curious fact, which has frequently come under my observation, and has been abundantly confirmed by the pioneers, that among half-breed children a decided majority are girls.... Often I have seen whole families of half-breed girls, but never one composed entirely of boys, and seldom one wherein they were more numerous.”3005 When I mentioned this statement to a gentleman who had spent many years in British Columbia and other parts of North America, he replied that he himself had made exactly the same observation. Mr. Starkweather has found that, according to the United States statistical tables of the sex of mulattoes born in the Southern States, there is an excess of from 12 to 15 per cent. of female mulatto children, whilst, taking the whole population together, the male births show an excess of 5 per cent.3006 In Central America, according to Colonel Galindo, “an extraordinary excess is observable in the births of white and Ladino females over those of the males, the former being in proportion to the latter as six, or at least as five, to four: among the Indians the births of males and females are about equal.”3007 Mr. Stephens asserts that, among the Ladinos of Yucatan, the proportion is even as two to one.3008 Taken in connection with the fact mentioned by Mr. Squier, that the whites in Central America are as one to eight in comparison with the mixed population,3009 these statements accord well with the following observation of M. Belly as regards Nicaragua:—“Ce qui me paraît être le fait général,” he says, “c’est que dans les villes où l’élément blanc domine, il se procrée en effet plus de filles que de garçons.... Mais dans les campagnes et partout où la race Indienne l’emporte, c’est le contraire qui se produit, et dès lors la prépondérance du sexe masculin se maintient par la prépondérance de l’élément indigène. Le même phénomène avait déjà été observé au Mexique.”3010
Concerning the proportion of the sexes at birth among the mixed races of South America, I have unfortunately no definite statements at my disposal. But Mr. J. S. Roberton informs me, from Chañaral in Chili, that in that country, with its numerous mongrels, more females are born than males. According to the list of the population of the capitaina of São Paulo, in the year 1815, given by v. Spix and v. Martius—a list which includes more than 200,000 persons,—the proportion between women and men is, among the mulattoes, 114·65 to 100; among the whites, 109·3 to 100; among the blacks, 100 to 129.3011 But this last proportion is of no consequence, as we have no account of the number of negro slaves annually imported into the capitaina. Sir R. F. Burton found, from the census returns of 1859 for the town of São João d’El Rei, where there is a large intermixture of the white race with the coloured women, an excess of nearly 50 per cent. of women as compared with men.3012 A census of the population in the Province of Rio, taken in the year 1844, also shows a considerable excess of women, not only, however, among the mixed population, but among the Indian and negro creoles as well;3013 and M. de Castelnau was astonished at the disproportionately large number of females in Goyaz.3014
In the northern parts of the United States, according to Kohl, female children predominate in the families of the cross-breeds arising from the intercourse of Frenchmen with Indian women.3015 This statement is very much like Graf v. Görtz’s, that the families of the offspring of Dutchmen and Malay women in Java (Lipplapps) consist chiefly of daughters.3016 A census taken in the eighteenth century, given by Süssmilch, proves also that among these mongrels there is a great excess of women over men.3017 From Stanley Pool in Congo, Dr. Sims writes to me, “It is the subject of general remark here, that the half-caste children are generally girls; out of ten I can count, two only are boys.” At the same time he states that, among the native Bateke people, no disproportion between the sexes is observable. Mr. Cousins informs me that, in the western province of Cis-Natalian Kafirland, in the “Karoo” district from Caledon up to Mossel Bay, there is a half-caste or mixed race called “Bruin Menschen,” generally known as bastards, among whom more females than males are born. Dr. Felkin found that, among the foreign women imported to Uganda, the excess of females in the first births was enormous, viz., 510 females to 100 males, as compared with 102 females to 100 males in first births from pure Waganda women; whilst in subsequent pregnancies of these imported women the ratio was 137 females to 100 males. As a matter of fact, in the families of the poorer classes of Uganda, who “do all in their power to marry pure Waganda women,” the sexes are as evenly balanced as in Europe, whereas this is certainly not the case among the children of chiefs and wealthy men who have large harems supplied mainly with foreign wives. “I found,” says Dr. Felkin, “that of the women captured by the slave-raiders in Central Africa, and brought down to the East Coast, either near Zanzibar or through the Soudan to the Red Sea, those who had been impregnated on the way usually produced female children. Hence the Soudan slave-dealers, instead of having only one slave to sell, have a woman and a female child.”3018 Dr. Felkin suggests, as an explanation of this excess of female births, that the temporarily superior parent produces the opposite sex; but the facts stated seem strongly to corroborate the theory that intermixture of race is in favour of female births. Very remarkable are two statements in the Talmud, that mixed marriages produce only girls.3019 Mr. Jacobs informs me that his collection of Jewish statistics includes details of 118 mixed marriages; of these 28 are sterile, and in the remainder there are 145 female children and 122 male—that is, 118·82 to 100 males.
We must not, of course, take for granted that what applies to certain races of men holds good for all of them; but it should be observed that the cases mentioned refer to mongrels of very different kinds. It is indeed scarcely probable that anything else than the crossing can be the cause of this excess of females, as facts tend to show that unions between related individuals or, generally, between individuals who are very like each other, produce a comparatively great number of male offspring.
In all the in-and-in bred stocks of the Bates herd at Kirklevington, according to Mr. Bell, the number of bull calves was constantly very far in excess of the heifers.3020 Of the in-and-in bred Warlaby branch of short-horns, Mr. Carr says that it “appears to have a most destructive propensity to breed bulls.”3021 Dr. Goehlert’s statement as regards horses, just referred to, is corroborated by Crampe’s investigations, which included more than two thousand different cases, all tending to prove that female foals predominate in proportion as the parent animals differ in colour.3022
We have seen that the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills are probably the most in-and-in bred people of whom anything is known, and we have also seen how, among them, the disproportion between male and female births is strikingly in favour of the males. Among the Badagas, a neighbouring people, who, like the Todas, have numerous subdivisions of caste, each of which differs in some social or ceremonial custom,3023 and all of which, probably, are endogamous, there is also a considerable surplus of men.3024 Now it is very remarkable that in another tribe inhabiting the same hill ranges, the Kotars, who do not intermarry with the inhabitants of their own village, but always seek a wife from another “kotagiri,” women are not so scarce as among the Todas and the Badagas.3025 Among the endogamous Maoris, the men outnumber the women. So also among the Sinhalese, who consider marriage between the father’s sister’s son and the mother’s brother’s daughter the most proper union. Among the polyandrous Arabs mentioned by Strabo, marriage between cousins was the rule. The polyandrous mountaineer of South Africa, in almost every case, marries a daughter of his father’s brother.3026 And with the Jews, among whom cousin marriages occur perhaps three times as often as among the surrounding populations,3027 the proportion of births is probably more in favour of the males than among the non-Jewish population of Europe.3028 All these facts, taken together, seem to render it probable that the degree of differentiation in the sexual elements of the parents exercises some influence upon the sex of the offspring, so that, when the differentiation is unusually great, the births are in favour of females; when it is unusually small, in favour of males.
We certainly cannot, from the numerical proportion of the sexes, especially at birth, draw any inference as to the form of marriage characteristic of the species. Among birds living in a state of nature, polyandry is almost unheard of, though, according to Dr. Brehm, the males are generally more numerous than the females.3029 As for man, there are several non-polyandrous peoples among whom the men are considerably in excess of the women; whilst among other peoples polygyny is forbidden, though the women are in excess of the men. Nevertheless, the form of marriage depends to a great extent upon the proportion between the male and female population. Polyandry, as already said, is due chiefly to a surplus of men, though it prevails only where the circumstances are otherwise in favour of it. And, as regards polygyny, I cannot agree with M. Chervin that it is quite independent of the proportion between the sexes.3030 It has been observed that, in India, polyandry occurs in those parts of the country where the males outnumber the females, polygyny in those where the reverse is the case.3031 Indeed, in countries unaffected by European civilization, polygyny seems to prevail wherever women form the majority.
Thus the causes which determine the proportion of the sexes exercise some influence also upon the form of marriage. Among the Eskimo, for instance, who, according to Armstrong, take more than one wife when the women are sufficiently numerous,3032 polygyny results chiefly from the dangerous life the men have to lead in order to gain their subsistence. Among the Indians of North America, it is, to a large extent, due to the wars which destroy many of the male population. In certain countries it seems to be furthered by physiological conditions leading to an excess of female births. As for polyandry, we have some reason to believe that it is due, on the one hand, to poor conditions of life, on the other to close intermarrying. As a matter of fact, the chief polyandrous peoples either live in sterile mountain regions, or are endogamous in a very high degree.
There are several reasons why a man may desire to possess more than one wife. First, monogamy requires from him periodical continence. He has to live apart from his wife, not only for a certain time every month,3033 but, among many peoples, during her pregnancy also.3034 Among the Shawanese, for instance, “as soon as a wife is announced to be in a state of pregnancy, the matrimonial rights are suspended, and continency preserved with a religious and mystical scrupulosity.”3035 This suspension of matrimonial rights is usually continued till a considerable time after child-birth. Among the Northern Indians, a mother has to remain in a small tent placed at a little distance from the others during a month or five weeks;3036 and similar customs are found among many other peoples.3037 Very commonly, in a state of savage and barbarous life, the husband must not cohabit with his wife till the child is weaned.3038 And this prohibition is all the more severe, as the suckling-time generally lasts for two, three, four years, or even more. In Sierra Leone, it was looked upon as a crime of the most heinous nature if a wife cohabited with her husband before the child was able to run alone.3039 Among the Makonde, in Eastern Africa, says Mr. Joseph Thomson, “when a woman bears a child, she lives completely apart from her husband till the child is able to speak, as otherwise it is believed that harm, if not death, would come to the infant.”3040 In Fiji, “the relatives of a woman take it as a public insult if any child should be born before the customary three or four years have elapsed.”3041 This long suckling-time is due chiefly to want of soft food and animal milk.3042 But when milk can be obtained,3043 and even when the people have domesticated animals able to supply them with it,3044 this kind of food is often avoided. The Chinese, who are a Tartar people, and must have descended at one time from the “Land of Grass,” entirely eschew the use of milk.3045
Professor Bastian suggests that it is on hygienic grounds, though almost instinctively, that a man abstains from cohabitation with his wife during her pregnancy, and as long as she suckles her child.3046 But the reason seems rather to be of a religious character. Diseases are generally attributed by savages to the influence of some evil spirit.3047 Among many peoples the attainment of the age of puberty is marked by most superstitious ceremonies.3048 A woman, during the time of menstruation, is looked upon with a mystic detestation.3049 It is therefore quite in accordance with primitive ideas that the appearance of a new being should be connected in some way with supernatural agencies. Among the Ashantees, according to Mr. Reade, “when conception becomes apparent, the girl goes through a ceremony of abuse, and is pelted down to the sea, where she is cleansed. She is then set aside; charms are bound on her wrists, spells are muttered over her, and, by a wise sanitary regulation, her husband is not allowed to cohabit with her from that time until she has finished nursing her child.”3050 A woman in child-bed is very commonly considered unclean.3051 In China, a man of the upper classes does not speak to his wife within the first month after the birth of a child, and no visitor will enter the house where she lives.3052 According to early Aryan traditions, as v. Żmigrodzki remarks, a witch and a woman in child-bed are persons so intimately connected, that it is impossible to make any distinction between them.3053
One of the chief causes of polygyny is the attraction which female youth and beauty exercise upon man. Several instances have already been mentioned of a fresh wife being taken when the first wife grows old. Indeed, when a man, soon after he has attained manhood, marries a woman of similar age—not to speak of such countries as China and Corea, where the first wife is generally a woman from three to eight years older than her husband3054—he will still be a man in the prime of life, when the youthful beauty of his wife has passed away for ever. This is especially the case among peoples at the lower stages of civilization, among whom, as a rule, women get old much sooner than in more advanced communities.
Thus in California, according to Mr. Powers, women are rather handsome in their free and untoiling youth, but after twenty-five or thirty they break down under their heavy burdens and become ugly.3055 Among the Mandans, the beauty of the women vanishes soon after marriage.3056 The Kutchin women get “coarse and ugly as they grow old, owing to hard labour and bad treatment.”3057 Patagonian women are said to lose their youth at a very early age, “from exposure and hard work;” and among the Warraus, according to Schomburgk, “when the woman has reached her twentieth year, the flower of her life is gone.”3058 In New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, and other islands of the South Sea, the beauty of women soon decays—“the result,” says Mr. Angas, “of hard labour in some cases, and in others of early intercourse with the opposite sex, combined with their mode of living, which rapidly destroys their youthful appearance.”3059
“Women of fifty in Europe,” Stavorinus observes, “look younger and fresher than those of thirty in Batavia.”3060 At two and twenty, Dyak beauty “has already begun to fade, and the subsequent decay is rapid.”3061 Among the Manipuris and Garos, the women, pretty when young, soon become “hags”;3062 and this is true also of the Aino women in Yesso, partly, it is said, because of the exposed life they lead as children, partly because of the early age at which they marry and become mothers, and partly because of the hard life they continue to lead afterwards.3063
In Africa female beauty fades quickly. The Egyptian women, from the age of about fourteen to that of eighteen or twenty, are generally models of loveliness in body and limbs, but, when they reach maturity, their attractions do not long survive.3064 In Eastern Africa, according to Sir R. F. Burton, the beauty of women is less perishable than in India and Arabia; but even there charms are on the wane at thirty, and, when old age comes on, the women are no exceptions to “the hideous decrepitude of the East.”3065 Arab girls in the Sahara preserve only till about their sixteenth year that youthful freshness which the women of the north still possess in the late spring of their life;3066 and, among the Ba-kwileh, women have no trace of beauty after twenty-five.3067 Speaking of the Wolofs, Mr. Reade remarks that the girls are very pretty with their soft and glossy black skin, but, “when the first jet of youth is passed, the skin turns to a dirty yellow and creases like old leather; their eyes sink into the skull, and the breasts hang down like the udder of a cow, or shrivel up like a bladder that has burst.”3068 Among the Damaras, Ovambo, and Kafirs, women, soon after maturity, begin to wither, as we are told, on account of hard labour;3069 and the Bushman women, it is said, soon become sterile from the same cause.3070 Among the Fulah, it is rare for a woman older than twenty to become a mother; and in Unyoro Emin Pasha never saw a woman above twenty-five with babies.3071
Early intercourse with the opposite sex is adduced by several writers as the cause of the short prime of savage women. But I am disposed to think that physical exertion has a much greater influence. Even from a physiological point of view hard labour seems to shorten female youth. Statistics show that, among the poorer women of Berlin, menstruation ceases at a rather earlier age than among the well-off classes.3072 It has been suggested that in hot countries women lose their beauty much sooner than in colder regions,3073 whereas men are not affected in the same way by climate. But, so far as I know, we are still in want of exact information on this point.
A further cause of polygyny is man’s taste for variety. Merolla da Sorrento asserts that the Negroes of Angola, who used to exchange their wives with each other for a certain time, excused themselves, when reproved, on the ground that “they were not able to eat always of the same dish.”3074 And in Egypt, according to Mr. Lane, “fickle passion is the most evident and common motive both to polygamy and repeated divorces.”3075
Motives due to man’s passions are not, however, the only causes of polygyny. We must also take into account his desire for offspring, wealth, and authority.
The barrenness of a wife is a very common reason for the choice of another partner. Among the Greenlanders, for instance, who considered it a great disgrace for a man to have no children, particularly no sons, a husband generally took a second wife, if the first one could not satisfy his desire for offspring.3076 Among the Botis of Ladakh, says Lieutenant Cunningham, “should a wife prove barren, a second can be chosen, or should she have daughters only, a second can be chosen similarly.”3077 In the Mutsa tribe of Indo-China, polygyny is allowed only if the wife is sterile;3078 and, among the Patuah or Juanga, the Eskimo at Prince Regent’s Bay, and several other peoples, already referred to, a man scarcely ever takes a second wife if the first wife gives him children.3079 Among the Tuski, “if a man’s wife bears only girls, he takes another until he obtains a boy, but no more.”3080 In China and Tonquin, and among the Munda Kols of Chota Nagpore, it sometimes happens that the barren wife herself advises her husband to take a fresh partner,3081 as Rachel gave Jacob Bilhah.3082