grown-up daughter would always command her price.[1870] In Africa I do not know of a single district where the people are in the habit of destroying new-born children. Herr Valdau tells us of a Bakundu woman who, accused of such a deed, was condemned to death.[1871] Until the introduction of Christianity, the South Sea Islanders practised infanticide probably to a greater extent than any other people with whose history we are acquainted. But as the motive was often want of food for the infant, or interference with the personal charms of the wife, or the disagreeableness of baby life, boys as well as girls were killed. Moreover, in Samoa, in the Mitchell’s and Hervey Groups, and in part of New Guinea, infanticide was quite unheard of;[1872] whilst, in most of the islands belonging to the Solomon Group, it occurs only in extreme cases, such as that of the child being a bastard.[1873] In the Caroline Islands, according to Chamisso, “the prince would have the unnatural mother punished with death.”[1874] And even in Australia, where, according to Mr. Curr’s belief, the women reared as a rule, only two boys and one girl, the rest being destroyed,[1875] there seem to be tribes in which the killing of children rarely happens.[1876] There are other reasons, besides those just given, for doubting whether infanticide can ever have been so common as Mr. McLennan suggests. It may be assumed, as Mr. Darwin remarks, that during the earliest period of human development man did not partially lose one of the strongest of instincts, common to all the lower animals, namely the love of their young, and consequently did not practise infanticide.[1877] Later on, the women, far from being useless to the savage tribe, rendered valuable services as food-providers. Mr. Fison, who has lived among uncivilized races for many years, thinks it will be found that female infanticide is far less common among the lower savages than it is among the more advanced tribes.[1878] And, speaking of one of the very rudest, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges states that it occurred only occasionally among them, and then was almost always the deed of the mother, who acted from “jealousy, or hatred of her husband, or because of desertion and wretchedness.”[1879] Moreover, it is very generally asserted that certain Californians never committed infanticide before the arrival of the whites;[1880] whilst Ellis thinks that there is every reason to suppose that this custom was practised less extensively by the Polynesians during the early periods of their history than it was afterwards.[1881]