[144] Dall, op. cit. p. 399.
[145] Waitz, op. cit. iii. 391.
[146] Wied-Neuwied, op. cit. ii. 39.
[147] von Kotzebue, op. cit. iii. 211.
[148] Valdau, in Ymer, v. 280.
[149] Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, p. 258.
[150] Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs, p. 111.
[151] Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. 54.
[152] Curr, The Australian Race, i. 100.
The custom of infanticide in most cases requires that the child should be killed immediately or soon after its birth. Among certain North American Indians “the right of destroying a child lasted only till it was a month old,” after which time the feeling of the tribe was against its death.[153] Ellis says of the Society Islanders:—“The horrid act, if not committed at the time the infant entered the world, was not perpetrated at any subsequent period…. If the little stranger was, from irresolution, the mingled emotions that struggled for mastery in its mother’s bosom, or any other cause, suffered to live ten minutes or half an hour, it was safe; instead of a monster’s grasp, it received a mother’s caress and a mother’s smile, and was afterwards nursed with solicitude and tenderness.”[154] Almost the same is said of other South Sea Islanders[155] and of tribes inhabiting the Australian continent.[156] That the custom of infanticide is generally restricted to the destruction of new-born babies also appears from various statements as to the parental love of those peoples who are addicted to this practice.[157] In Fiji “such children as are allowed to live are treated with a foolish fondness.”[158] Among the Narrinyeri, “only let it be determined that an infant’s life shall be saved, and there are no bounds to the fondness and indulgence with which it is treated”;[159] and with reference to other Australian tribes we are told that it is brought up with greater care than generally falls to the lot of children belonging to the poorer classes in Europe.[160] Among the Indians of the Pampas and other Indians of that neighbourhood, who abandon deformed or sickly-looking children to the wild dogs and birds of prey, an infant becomes, from the moment it is considered worthy to live, “the object of the whole love of its parents, who, if necessary, will submit themselves to the greatest privations to satisfy its least wants or exactions.”[161] In Madagascar, according to Ellis, “nothing can exceed the affection with which the infant is treated by its parents and other members of the family; the indulgence is more frequently carried to excess than otherwise.”[162] From these and similar facts, as also from the general absence of statements to the contrary, I conclude that murders of children who have been allowed to survive their earliest infancy are very rare, though not quite unknown,[163] among the lower races.