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The Descent of Man

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INFANTICIDE.<br />

This practice is now very common throughout<br />

the world, and there is reason to believe that it<br />

prevailed much more extensively during former<br />

times. (12. Mr. M'Lennan, 'Primitive Marriage,'<br />

1865. See especially on exogamy and<br />

infanticide, pp. 130, 138, 165.) Barbarians find it<br />

difficult to support themselves and their children,<br />

and it is a simple plan to kill their infants.<br />

In South America some tribes, according to<br />

Azara, formerly destroyed so many infants <strong>of</strong><br />

both sexes that they were on the point <strong>of</strong> extinction.<br />

In the Polynesian Islands women have<br />

been known to kill from four or five, to even<br />

ten <strong>of</strong> their children; and Ellis could not find a<br />

single woman who had not killed at least one.<br />

In a village on the eastern frontier <strong>of</strong> India Colonel<br />

MacCulloch found not a single female<br />

child. Wherever infanticide (13. Dr. Gerland<br />

('Ueber das Aussterben der Naturvolker,' 1868)<br />

has collected much information on infanticide,<br />

see especially ss. 27, 51, 54. Azara ('Voyages,'

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