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. Düsing[2975] 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.