It is the social actions of men which produce the most profound disturbances in the proportion of the sexes. To begin with, in savage or barbarous countries, where violent death has become an ordinary occurrence for men, the number of adult females much exceeds that of adult males. Thus, at Bantou, when the Dutch established themselves there, they found ten women to one man.[173] In La Soñora, at the end of a civil war, there were seven women to one man. In spite of all moral and legal precepts, such conditions unfailingly result in polygamy, disguised or not. On the contrary, a custom very widely spread in savage countries, that of the infanticide of girls, not less necessarily engenders polyandry, if the equilibrium in the numerical proportion of the sexes is not re-established in another manner. In reality, the infanticide of girls has been largely practised in nearly all polyandrous countries. It seems also that the custom of sacrificing the female children influences in the long run the natural production of the sexes. Thus the polyandrous Todas, who _formerly_ killed their girls, have actually a sexual proportion of 133.3 for adults, and of 124 for the children.[174] In Polynesia, where the infanticide of girls was so largely practised, the sexual relation to-day is altogether in favour of male births. In New Zealand the proportion of the sexes in 1858 was 130.3 for adults, and 122.2 for non-adults.[175] In 1839, in the Sandwich Islands, the numerical proportion was 125.08 for adults, and 125.75 for non-adults. In 1872 a general census of all the Sandwich Islands gave for the numerical proportion of the sexes 125.36. But there is more than one way of falsifying the proportion of the sexes. It is not necessary to kill nearly all the female children, as was the custom among the Gonds of Bengal, where in many villages Macpherson did not see a single girl;[176] it suffices to sell them. It is even the sale of girls which in many countries has at first restrained the savage practice of feminine infanticide. Girls became a merchandise negotiated by the parents, and afterwards redeemed by the men, because they could not do without them; but then it happened, in various countries and among various races, that men joined together to lighten the expense, and that several of them contented themselves with one wife in common, became polyandrous.