For paternal affection Natural Selection has done much less than for maternal; and it is easy to understand why. For, useful as the father’s assistance is in securing various advantages to the growing child, yet even if he should cruelly abandon it altogether, the maternal love would still remain interposed to save and rear it. Nor is it in the human race alone that paternal is weaker than maternal love. Among mammals, as Horwicz remarks, we even come across a Herr Papa occasionally who shows a great inclination to dine on his progeny. And how irregularly the paternal—sometimes even the maternal—instinct is displayed among savages is graphically shown by this group of cases collected by Herbert Spencer:— “As among brutes the philoprogenitive instinct is occasionally suppressed by the desire to kill, and even devour, their young ones; so among primitive men this instinct is now and again overridden by impulses temporarily excited. Thus, though attached to their offspring, Australian mothers, when in danger, will sometimes desert them; and if we may believe Angas, men have been known to bait their hooks with the flesh of boys they have killed. Thus, notwithstanding their marked parental affection, Fuegians sell their children for slaves; thus, among the Chonos Indians, a father, though doting on his boy, will kill him in a fit of anger for an accidental offence. Everywhere among the lower races we meet with like incongruities. Falkner, while describing the paternal feelings of Patagonians as very strong, says they often pawn and sell their wives and little ones to the Spaniards for brandy. Speaking of the children of the Sound Indians, Bancroft says they ‘sell or gamble them away.’ According to Simpson, the Pi-Edes ‘barter their children to the Utes proper for a few trinkets or bits of clothing.’ And of the Macusi, Schomburgk writes, ‘the price of a child is the same as an Indian asks for his dog.’ This seemingly heartless conduct to children often arises from the difficulty experienced in rearing them.” Some light is thrown on the genesis and composition of parental affection by the three reasons named by Spencer, why among savages and semi-civilised peoples in general sons were much more appreciated than daughters. While daughters were little more than an encumbrance to the parents, useless before puberty, and lost to them after marriage, the sons could make themselves useful in warding off the enemy, in avenging personal injuries, and in performing the funeral rites for the benefit of departed ancestors.